In a message dated 3/24/2010 18:28:21 Eastern Daylight Time, krf...@aol.com writes:
Lets make teenagers the enemy. (mailto:al.krig...@krf.icodat.com) <snip> PS: I can understand the Gallery and Market St East. I can understand South Street. But the "40th Street Corridor" is a figment of some very fertile imaginations... why would a crowd of teenagers want to mass there? Surely they don't want to steal mouse-dropping-tainted produce. ____________________________________________________________________________ _______ Teenagers aren't the enemy; teenagers with no sense of responsibility mixed with a thugery catalyst are a serious problem. You can make the problem any color you want. Three Thursday's ago (03/04) I was in CC after the Gallery Riot. The Black kids were still being accorded great deference, almost recklessly. Black break dancing kids had shut down the entire sidewalk along the NE Corner 11th & Market Sts. They actually set down traffic cones to secure their performance area. Early in the afternoon pedestrians could deal with it. Later in the afternoon criss-crossing pedestrian patterns were pushed into the street to compete with the cars. Bluntly, why would the street performers imagine they had a right to takeover the sidewalk. Why did the police not respond even after 2+ hours. And, the dancers were not particularly talented. When I was back in the area on the 9th it was like a mini police state, oh, and no dancers. Strangely there were police officers wearing Temple University uniforms. No, I did not ask what they were doing there, nor did a lot of the cops appear to be happy, even though it was a beautiful day. There are many incidents of badly behaving kids, usually black, in a majority minority city that goes unreported in the press. We had an incident on the 3900 block of Market posted on the list last summer. No, they weren't over turning cars but you wouldn't want to meet up with them at the Bridge, as someone suggested they might be destined. With some regularity, groups of kids late at night get on SEPTA vehicles and behave very badly up to fighting, breaking windows, and scaring the hell out of drivers and passengers; but you have no knowledge because its not in the news and none of your people fell victim. I can assure you within the past several years SEPTA threatened to suspend stops at one major location in S Philly unless an institution stepped in to clean-up its bad boys and girls behavior. When you are not a tuff-guy or wise to the street, it is easy to liberally politicize very explosive and dangerous behaving-badly. Forgetting most list members privileged existence, imagining looking into the black and blue face of a young person whose front teeth have been knocked out and not have a prayer of getting enough money to have their teeth replaced. Sometimes prophylactic policing prevents disorder and kids stupidly creating criminal histories for themselves. Ciao, Craig
