Simon Says Stop (second edition since I forgot the earlier post)

Part II - a rewrite of Nov. 18 that's much better than this edition. I can't figure out how to jump stories to where I want them.

The real news in a newspaper is not on the front page; that's pack reporting. But take a good look at P. A17, usually the metro or city beat. What you will see is the end of the American empire, the buried tragedy of the inner-city that usually gets little front-page action.
So said David Simon, the former Baltimore Sun reporter who created "Homicide: A Year on the Streets of the Killing Fields." Then his cable series "The Wire," which ran for what? Five years? Its dead-on verisimilitude actually rang true
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There was a time when groups like the Black Panthers provoked genuine fear, a fear of an uprising. In this scenario, the Panthers would gather in East Harlem and march down Park Avenue. Residents would afraid to leave their condos, but were too afraid to leave it to whatever those doormen do to stay up at three am.
Yet people get killed on public transportation, in openly public places, and of course convenience stores.
If we are ever going to get real jobs in WPA programs, as Obama is talking about, they're going to have to include addiction programs.
The news philosophy in local reporting everywhere seems to be, as Simon said at a meeting at Princeton University, "if we don't acknowledge it, it doesn't exist."
Simon, a squat man in his 40s or so, with a shaved head, looks like a character on the series. He told the distinguished professors and others that the ghetto economy is going to take 30 years to fade away. Do not convict anyone on a non-violent drug charge; it's a complete waste of time and does not not make the punishment fit the crime.
Instead of rookie teachers at the worst schools, pay established teachers "combat pay;" - that is, about double what their peers are getting.
Instead, he said, "statistics are the devil."
Teachers are told to get their numbers down (of violent crime, of rape, armed robbery etc., as well as classroom achievement). The teachers, quite naturally, cheat with their kids numbers.

This is the heart of the ghetto policy: lower what the students have to do for qualifying as to what constitutes major crimes, push the teachers to raise numbers up at the state and national level (like the No Child Left Behind program), anyway they can.

This situation is at the heart of the show; in politics, in police, and in the prisons. The system is rigged: you can't win. Policy and Police commanders, at the point of tears, are interrogated as to why the crime numbers aren't down.
So armed robbery, mugging, and other street crimes are pushed into less serious categories, so major violent offenses are supposedly down.

But simply standing around shaking your head in disbelief at increasingly brazen, open violent crime does no good.

"The question becomes, "Are we one society or are we not?" 'Simon said. "If we're not, let's hire more private security guards and build more gated communities. And let's to terms with the fact that America only works for some of us."