The quote at the head of this article is from the author of The Wire, who was a Baltimore reporter during the worst times, when this hunting template of police work was honed to a rarified form.
I like the slant on this article. I would just like to add that the collective mind of Baltimore is so twisted from abuse that what is left is utterly beyond reform or redemption. I’m still smugly proud to have survived 30 years on the low end of this crime vector.
In this article David Simon lays out not only the history of the BPD disfunctionality, but the root cause of it's problem, as well. With Mr. Simon going on the record to lengths that "the Wire" never did (despite the fact it was quite the complex and nuanced show), how can Martin O'Malley remain a candidate for president? Simon has laid out one of the most powerful cases against MO'M. How his opponents wouldn't use it is beyond me. Simon saw his city burning and must have said "enough is enough" and aimed his pen directly at the heart of the 'Teflon Leprechaun.'
In The Wire, all you have to see is the few meetings about drug arrest stats and the massaging of the numbers, and a little imagination, to imagine the process ending up right here. It is amazing to me that so many folks have seen that entre series—and Homicide—and still choose to believe that the 'protect and serve' motto on the police cruisers means anything other than 'protecting political office holders and serving the crime stat juker.'
I couldn't read past the leftist, slanted, politically correct description of Israel as apartheid as this linked article begins.
Even your eclectic readership is unlikely to notice it, because this characterization of Israel regularly passes under the radar.
It is more than a double standard when Israel and Jordan take the same measure to an act of terrorism, and Israel is protested, Jordan is not. When a terrorist state that applauds killing Jews publicly can make it under the UN umbrella, but Israel, for defending its citizens is racist and discriminating, guilty of war crimes.
I observe parallels with your critiques of US leftist political correctness and media reporting and world political correctness and media reporting relative to Israel, where it is a crime to be a Jew defending Jews against terrorists/criminals who have outdone themselves as self-portrayed victims on manipulative social media campaigns.
For our situation in the US, in Baltimore, we have your website. For Israel, you have to go to Israeli news sources and blogs.
I needed to point out this as a kindred spirit on a related issue.
Thanks,
DL
Simon's analysis of Baltimore was spot on. And, even if we agree that Israel has a right to exist, the IDF is, when operating in Gaza, functioning as an army of occupation, so his analogy is spot on.
I suspect his point was, with Israel and the people of Gaza you have two enemy peoples, one of whom won the land from the other in a war [1971 I think], coexisting on a martial law footing. That may be appropriate over there, his argument seems to run, but not over here where we are supposedly members of the same society.
The bigger question of leftists [and libertarians] holding Israel to a higher standard than Arab nations, is, I suspect, an attempt to hold that nation to a European standard of behavior, knowing all along that the Arab nations will be run along despotic lines. That does not seem unreasonable to me, since 90% of the Jewish population of Israel is of European or American extraction.
Personally, my view is that all governments, including the government of Israel, are criminal enterprises, and I expect nothing but criminal behavior from them, and could care less what they do to their own slaves and enemies. The fantasy of the benign state is not something I share.
His analogy is not spot on, because it overlooks the reason for the "occupation," which is extreme hood rat / terrorist behavior that the Israelis have every right to defend themselves against, much as you have the right to defend yourself against hood rats. If not for this, there would be no "occupation."
My point was largely about leftist, politically correct media misrepresentation, selectively misinforming for political agenda reasons, which leads to conclusions like his and the ease with which you or anyone else may agree. We'll disagree on this one.