Comments on Culture of Life Education News: BUBBLEGUM CRISIS

Elaine: From a different angle, this is bureaucrac...

2005-07-18T23:43:00.000-04:00

Elaine: From a different angle, this is bureaucracy in action. The latter phenomenon consists not only of bored officials pushing paper from here to there and back.

Elaine: I'm not disagreeing. I suspect when one di...

2005-07-18T23:37:00.000-04:00

Elaine: I'm not disagreeing. I suspect when one digs deeper into things like this, more often than not the screwup (or malicious act) cannot be blamed on a single individual, but it becomes a matter of group dynamics and the incentive and social structure in which the group in question is embedded. From whichever side one looks at it, the (apparent) increase of such happenings may be "just" a sign of an increasingly dysfunctional social order. While excessive force by the police is always committed by the very cops on the ground, the cops are only tools/symptoms of a larger phenomenon. I don't mean this in an apologetic way at all.

Cm, it was a little girl.She was alone and being a...

2005-07-18T22:23:00.000-04:00

Cm, it was a little girl.

She was alone and being assaulted by a gang of boys.

Once the cops did come, take a look at the situation, they arrested her? Again, this reeks of something very foul.

And then we read newspapers reporting "crime rates...

2005-07-17T13:43:00.000-04:00

And then we read newspapers reporting "crime rates are up, predominantly in 'minority' neighborhoods" with the supporting evidence of assaults reported and 911 units dispatched.

Elaine, I don't mean to disagree or dilute that a ...

2005-07-17T13:40:00.000-04:00

Elaine, I don't mean to disagree or dilute that a victim is being further victimized by the state.

That this happened in a "poor" district adds an important twist to the story. I'm not an expert in 911 procedures in California, but that both medical personnel and cops respond to calls, often times multiple units, is so far not unusual. What is is the force strength of the cops and the helicopter. Here I can only speculate that that's because of the location of the call, a "non-white" (?) neighborhood. That may also be how the felony assault was imputed.

But I suspect aside from targeting specific individuals there are deeper social and organizational forces at work -- local government trying to posture as being tough on people "disturbing the peace", or perhaps managing perceptions where social problems come from, and incentives for police in generating incident or prosecution statistics indicating that more forces and funds are needed, or how successful the police has become after installing such, but "more is needed". I'm sure there will be an annual report somewhere stating the number of 911 assault calls, and how many vehicles "had to be" dispatched and in which locations.

a girl walking alone who is assaulted by strange b...

2005-07-17T09:43:00.000-04:00

a girl walking alone who is assaulted by strange boys in a gang has a right to self defence and this includes using rocks and sticks and whatever to drive them off

Go, Elaine.

I found this story at BBC and was stunned by how many ugly memories it called up for me and how many times I had to hurt boys to get them to leave me alone. I guess according to LAPD, I was a dangerous, serial felon. Funny, I never felt dangerous, just endangered.

Noel remarked, The police sure seem to think they ...

2005-07-17T09:03:00.000-04:00

Noel remarked, The police sure seem to think they need to act as judge and executioner...

I noticed this troubling comment from the police sergeant in the BBC article: We determined a felony assault had taken place.

Cops are not empowered to determine that a felony assault has taken place. That's for the courts to decide. Cops can arrest, with sufficient evidence, only on suspicion of a crime having been committed. It is an extremely dangerous attitude for the police to think they are judges and for the public to let them get away with it.

I can't know what the outcome of the girl's case will be, but I suspect that she'll undergo a court-ordered psych evaluation, be forced to take Ritalin, and be threatened with a lengthy sentence in adult prison if she ever touches a rock again. The neocons can then sleep a little easier knowing that such dangerous offenders have been given a lesson in compassionate conservatism.

Michaelm: I tried leaving information at your webs...

2005-07-17T07:36:00.000-04:00

Michaelm: I tried leaving information at your website but your comments isn't working! You better check it out.

If anyone is living in California, write to Gov. Girlie-man, the fake he-man.

Tell him it is a shame a little girl can't defend herself. Shame, shame, shame. HE owes her an apology.

Great minds, eh, Elaine. My latest blog entry hig...

2005-07-17T07:28:00.000-04:00

Great minds, eh, Elaine. My latest blog entry highlights the story.

Being a woman [and ex little girl] you're take is more 'insightfull' alright.

One other thing that's crossed my mind since posting my own, while maybe not so nausiating is the criminal waste of so much police time - AND the enormous cost which must have been involved.

Flets of cars and a ruddy helicopter for God's sake. They must have money to burn. The local people's tax money of course.

Easy come, easy go eh?

I referenced your post on my entry here, after wri...

2005-07-17T05:42:00.000-04:00

I referenced your post on my entry here, after writing an open letter to Maribel. Your insights (especially as a woman) are invaluable to me on this issue.

It's increasingly obvious now, as you suggest, that we have a systemic problem of preemptive authoritarian-justified violence.

Many in California are worried about the influx of...

2005-07-16T22:44:00.000-04:00

Many in California are worried about the influx of Mexicans. This is rather funny since California, like Texas and Arizona and NM, all were Mexican territories until our military invasion took it away.

History is full of ironies!

What is even funnier is, many Mexican families are good Catholics and pratice spotty birth controls so they often have big families. This freaks out the right wingloons who want to force non-Hispanics to have more children. Twisted mess.

Stealing a car is not a light matter CM but they k...

2005-07-16T22:23:00.000-04:00

Stealing a car is not a light matter CM but they knew who was in it, they had their hands up it was clear that it was not Osama. While not a light matter to steal a car it is a common occurance among teen agers and a friend worked for Right of Passage, a "boot camp" for kids run by the Pyute Indians in the Nevada desert where a large portion of the boys were there for joy riding. The point is their inconsistant application of the law and lack of common sense. Did you also read about the serial killer of women they refused to arrest here (lower down the same page). He tried to surrender himself and they gave him the bum's rush. Only when he returned with a severed breast in a baggie did they arrest him.

Gallantry and chivalry are as dead here as they were in Germany in the 1930s when it was "survival of the fittest" and taking advantage of the "weak" was "good for the gene pool." That 11 year old girl is being raped by the system in a case of victim bashing, a term I first heard in the early days of the Reagan (Bush I) administration. It is a heinous thing to arrest any 11 year old kid for throwing a rock but utterly dispicable to torture this little girl in this way. And what will she do if she is accosted in the future?

The police sure seem to think they need to act as judge and executioner in the case of delivering beatings to perceived evil doers. They seem to be brainwashed to think the courts are too "liberal" and that the evil peasants are not locked up often enough or long enough in spite of the fact that we are, by far the most imprisoned people on earth. Our wealth has definitly embued us with an Ivory Tower complacency and detachment from reality and concern for others CM. Coupled with technology that did not exist in the first billion or so years of our evolution such as television and even books, our minds are suffocating in our own fantasy world. Great technology with crap for content. Feeding people to the lions for entertainment.

We are ripe for El Salvador style death squads to replace the pretense of democracy, freedom and rule of law. The neocons are wringing their hands with glee as they prepare for this inevitable coup.

1. This is a young GIRL they arrested.2. The boys...

2005-07-16T21:44:00.000-04:00

1. This is a young GIRL they arrested.

2. The boys way outnumbered her.

3. They attacked her first and they admitted they attacked her while she was alone.

4. Girls have been murdered or raped after boys "playfully" do stuff like lift skirts or dowse with water, etc. I know this for a fact.

5. I was more dangerous than her. And I never attacked unless the other side threw a blow first. But when outnumbered, one has to use "distance" weapons. No "close combat". Especially if one is a girl.

6. Damn. Talk about gallantry and chivalry being dead! I would have walloped those boys myself just for being whiners. They could have demanded the cops not arrest their victim. "Officer, we are the ones who should go to jail. We attacked her." Certainly, that would go a long ways.

Remember: girls may use anything at hand to drive off boys attacking them. You never know. I was raped when I was only five. It hurt. You can't tell if someone hostile might do worse. They can and have. Repeatedly through history. Boys should know better than to attack a girl alone.

On the article, I suspect it has something to do w...

2005-07-16T21:21:00.000-04:00

On the article, I suspect it has something to do with the sense of complacency, entitlement to comfort, and the fortress mentality this engenders that have overcome Western society. Social cohesion has greatly declined, and instead of working things out in reasonable ways, maintenance of some kind of rule is outsourced to cops and lawyers. I wouldn't assume right away it's all top-down.

Does that sound plausible? What do you think?

Noel: Misappropriation of a car is not a light mat...

2005-07-16T21:16:00.000-04:00

Noel: Misappropriation of a car is not a light matter, and I would give the cops a minimal benefit of doubt that they don't know who is in the car when making their move.

Hi ElaineI was thinking of you and your previous l...

2005-07-16T21:09:00.000-04:00

Hi Elaine

I was thinking of you and your previous log entry after writing a rant in my own web log titled Tweedle Dee-Tweedle Dum and the new American Gestapo and worried that you might see it and take some of it personally. The parts where I bad mouth the CIA and those who suddenly love it re gettin' Karl Rove.

So much of this post of yours, relates to mine, in my own mind at least, that I feel somewhat relieved and feel you can easily draw the distinction I did not make between the evil-doing of the CIA and those within it who are actually doing the right thing.

In addition we have gained a neighborhood bully in the last year or two who runs people out on pretenses and claims to have been in the CIA. He fits the profile. The nastier one. It's in my neighborhood paper and I am wondering if you might know how to verify one way or the other if he was other than pushing Karl Rove's buttons.

There is also an article on the newspaper page about little girls getting arrested for joy riding...stealing a car just to ride around in and then park. I thought they had Osama cornered when I first looked out my window to see a massive police presence, weapons drawn and leveled at the car. I ran and got my cool Sony digital camera with infrared capability and about died laughing when this kids filed out of the car. The pictures are on the page.

We always had rock battles as kids growing up in the D.C. suburbs and not arresting us for it did not lead to the sort of violence L.A. is infamous for or make us hate cops the way Los Angelenos do. Vietnam, loss of freedom and the expanding police state did that.