Let’s face it: Most police work is reactive, not proactive. If you think for one minute that the police authorities anywhere are spending the vast majority of their time trying to prevent rather than to solve crime, I think you are living in a dream world.
So it’s nice to see this in today’s Indy Star:
“Indy’s just getting nuts, man,” said Byron Alston, director of Save the Youth, an Eastside neighborhood social services program. “We can’t blame the police no more. It’s up to us.”
Well, regardless of bad grammar, no shit, Sherlock. The fact is that you never could blame the police. The problem was right there on your doorstep, in your community, and you should have dealt with it firmly.
If people had taken that attitude back in 1998 when we had 162 murders (one of them the lady who lived right across the hall from me, who was shot dead in the common foyer by her idiot ex-boyfriend about six feet from where I was sleeping in my bedroom) instead of whining about how the police weren’t doing their job, maybe we wouldn’t be in this situation today.
And this is in the running for “most stupid thing I’ve ever heard of.”
The harsh reality of the rise in recent homicides will be on display today as a procession of hearses winds through Indianapolis streets.
Marion County funeral directors will lead the “Stop the Violence — Peace in the Streets” hearse caravan starting at 5:30 p.m., from Glendale Town Center.
“The overall purpose is to promote peace in the streets and to show the community, especially the young people, that death is final,” said Angela Grundy-Sallee, who helped organize the event.
The line of up to 20 hearses will leave the mall at 6101 N. Keystone Ave. from the parking lot facing Rural Street. The 32-mile route around the city’s Eastside is expected to take a little more than an hour.
And absolutely no criminal is going to care.
This brings to mind my recent post on the futility of political action. Don’t make big splashes in hopes of Jesus moments amongst the criminal class — it’s not going to happen. Go home and bring your children up to respect life, authority, and other people’s property. Keep them off drugs and off the streets. Make sure they don’t drop out of school. And insist that communities police their own instead of expecting the police to do it for them.