Quick hint, Gannett Star: Tell Black Expo it's time to find another home.
This happens every year. Every year.
If Expo can't fix the problem, then maybe Expo is the problem.
This is why I was armed when I went downtown Saturday morning.
Officials said there was a simple formula for the violence: thousands of children unleashed without parental supervision and too many guns illegally owned and used.
The first should be fixable with discipline. The second, by ensuring that law-abiding citizens are also armed, and well-trained in self-defense.
Said the Rev. Charles Harrison, a United Methodist minister: "I am mad as hell. I am sick and tired of us making excuses for some of our young people. There was a lot of gang activity taking place. We need to deal with the real issues. Some of our kids are out of control."
No shit, Reverend. No shit. But when your community continues to allow rabble-rousers like Al Sharpton a bully pulpit to encourage those young people to keep dissing the po-po, that's what happens.
Bonus: Loved the pic of Mayor Ballard wearing the sign of the screaming chicken on his shirt.
Well, didn't love it, actually.
notice the Star did not hav comments on tha tstory? The ywill not like what they get.
There is a reason no one goes downtown those two weeks. If saying that makes me a bigot, so be it.
When my daughter was planning her wedding the various event locations all told her have it this week or that but DO NOT plan an event downtown during Black Expo. Everyone knows the issues, but no one is willing to say it out loud.
I assure you that's why I was packing. I knew that coming back home I would have several thousand dollars in checks in the car with me.
I try to avoid downtown during Expo like the plague.
Like you, if that makes me a bigot, I say make the most of it.
Frank Straub wants to blame the guns.
That is, of course, BS. I'm pretty sure that the gun/person ratio approached 1:1 at the Brewpub on Sunday, and a shooting spree unhappened.
Uh, actually tens of thousands of people go downtown during those two weeks.
I'll further note that, as I predicted when the story first broke, that our shooter was a local boy.
I think he means "nobody who doesn't have pressing business there".
I've been down there several times in the last few weeks but always because that's where the meeting was or that's where the stuff was I had to pick up and bring back home.
I'm unsurprised that the shooter was local, but I continue to disagree with the guy who kept saying it had nothing to do with Expo because "those kids weren't down there for Expo". Maybe they weren't down there for Expo, but I imagine they were drawn down there by Expo.
And as for Frank Straub, the sooner he goes back to New York City, the better.
Nathan,
Black Expo suffers from the same problems we had with Freaknik (Black College Spring Break) back in my home town:
1) The problem is not directly with the event or the attendees. Like I kept pointing out with Freaknik, Cliff Huxtable's kid, who is in town for the weekend festivities, is not there to do violence, merely to get drunk and have a good time.
2) Indy, like ATL, is a convention town, but not really a party town. Both cities are well set up to deal with the National Association of Industrial HVAC Salesmen, but not a 3- or 5-day street party. (Ironically, tiny Speedway is probably better versed in handling this sort of thing than is the surrounding metropolis.)
3) A city like IND or ATL has its own organic thug element, far larger than that in, say, Daytona Beach or Sturgis, which will be drawn to the event like a moth to a flame.
The results are predictable.