Living and spending most of my time on the East Side of Cleveland, where violent crime - mostly armed robbery related - is a daily thing, I can tell you that nobody feels safe around here right now, and it is at its worst under the current economy.

There is a solution... one and only one solution... and that is to help the 1,000s of people here who are poor and unskilled for work here to get working and making money - it is what alll people need and want, to be able to live a good personal and family life.

As long as "Community Development" is about SIIs and consolidating the underclass in poverty zones, expect lots of people to get popped for things as stupid as a purse, car or shoes, ALL OVER TOWN AND IN THE BURBS... EVEN XURBS.

Now do you see why this top-down leadership bullshit doesn't work, and is downright dangerous?!?!?

Because the powers that be live in places where the poor know they are not safe to go, like Gates Mills and Westlake, and the powers avoid the poor and poverty zones - that is the core to the whole SII/ODOT corridor, anchor, zone, moat and buffer urban planning model - it makes the powers feel safe.

Do the rest of you feel safe?

In this economy, without hope and jobs for the growing poor, if you are in Northeast Ohio, you should not ever feel safe.

And it ain't about black or white - an out of work uneducated Medina mall rat is just as likely to snap and go violent as an Ohio City ghetto thug.

Price of poverty, getting worse.

Disrupt IT

In the Cleveland.com/PD coverage, there were blurbs from Councilman Cimpermann (pretty legit altho an entirely scripted       typical predictable statement) and then Joe Marinucci put forth a quip...

"Police plan to re-examine other robberies in the area and the Gang Impact Squad is checking for gang connections. Detectives are examining surveillance video from locations near the shooting. 

"We're hopeful and confident that it will help us identify the people responsible for the shooting," Stacho said. 

Joe Marinucci, president of the Downtown Cleveland Alliance, said the entire area is safe and called the shooting a very unfortunate incident. He said 10,000 people live downtown and 100,000 commute in and out of the area every day. 

"It's an incident we're concerned about, but I put it into context," he said. "Overall, downtown remains a very safe environment."
 

So I'm wondering why does the PD need to turn to the DCA president to get a goofy positive summaration on the extent of a crime? What do they think he's got to do with it...? He holds no position of power over this stuff and he's got no claim to knowledge over it. Why not just do the necessary reporting and not reach to stick him into the mix. He could have just as easily said..."Luckily this type of thing just doesn't happen in the daytime when we are around, we represent the busy class and we won't put up with those foolin' around"

 
Are not the answer to the growing division of reality going on here in NEO. Cities like Cleveland have to take vacant properties into receivership and then turn those properties over to residents who will restore those properties, like Norm is doing in East Cleveland--some one willing to pay taxes to keep the communities alive. Companies are not willing to pay taxes and have no loyalty to their communities, so now it is contingent upon homeowners.

Mohsin Hamid spoke about universal issues that plague humanity at the IdeaCenter Baker-Nord lecture. He spoke about 9/11 and asked us to put it into proportion, much like the Downtown Alliance folks rushed in to assure folks that Cleveland at night is SAFE. How much do we allow fear to cripple our lives? Mohsin Hamid talked about terrorism. It has been a reality for thousands of years. The United States has just been fortunate to have enjoyed peace for so long, but we are also unable to see the real enemy as Norm describes in his post. No one talks about the Oklahoma City bombing. We know cars kill people everyday and, yet, we get into them. I know that I am not doing justice to Mohsin Hamid's discourse, so I hope that it becomes available on line at some point.

 Thanks for bringing this up Norm.  There will be a generation of forgotten children roaming the streets.  The kids we have let fall through the cracks.  The Applewood Center near my house once provided a haven for some of these kids, but despite the passage of Issue 15,  Cuyahoga County closed the residency program at Applewood. 

As for feeling safe, I recognize almost everyone I come in contact with in my neighborhood.  If I see someone I don't know, I introduce myself or, at least, smile and say hi.  I know it sounds pollyannish, but it works for me and it works for a lot of my neighbors.  I feel safer in my neighborhood, because it is a neighborhood with old folks, families, and kids from all cultures of the world.  I just wish we could find a way to put some of these folks into some of the vacant housing.  I know a family from West Africa paying $800 in rent and paying to send their four kids to Metro Catholic...sad.

The Plain Dealer just released more information today that dispels some of the random element of the crime...drugs must play a factor here.

  There have been plenty of folks killed while surrounded by their richness and affluence. Safety and well-being are not correlated with wealth.  Certainly, we don't want to follow Colombia's pattern of social disintegration.  It's happening, but not that extreme, yet.

Today, my street was filled with kids, mostly girls on roller skates.  I chose to believe that they are not casing my house for a break-in.

  Please just let me say this and not get hammered.  I am sick of labeling people "black" and "white."  I really think it has to stop and I am not critiquing you, Norm.  I am just venting my frustration at our societal tendency to try and summarize a person in one color code.  Truthfully, my skin tone has a greenish tinge, especially in the summer, not because of my environmental tendencies, but because I have a mixture of Mediterranean and Caucausian genes.  But, please don't call me a green person. We have cultural differences--very much so--this is where we have to make strides at understanding each other.  But, skin color should not be the issue.  We are all just trying to get through to the next day and have some joy to share in our lives no matter what the sun does to our skin.

 or FOCOLTONE 4042 (actually I think the focoltone color schemes give more accurate renderings, norm, especially if you have any olive tones).

So how far off was AG Holder when he called us "a nation of cowards" when it comes to race? If we can't call things what they are, we're never going to be able to address them, for better or worse.

The more "normal" people you have using a city, on the street, the less of this sort of terrorism you have. We have found this to be true in every urban situation where we have lived, and Cleveland is no exception.

NEO residents are exceptionally timid when it comes to urban living. They let their fear form barriers and never come downtown. All it takes is an act of terrorism, like this one, and it reinforces staying away in droves. The people of northeast Ohio are, on balance, way more fearful than people from anywhere else I've lived. NEO needs therapy, or confidence-building, or restoration of self-worth and self-esteem.

If people would only realize that this is the way the disenfranchised punks take over property they don't own, and begin to take back their cities, we would have fewer of these incidents.

And, our first expenditures as a public need to be on safety. We need to protect lives first, property after that. The priorities are simple. With protecting lives come things like police, fire, health, and so forth. With property come fire and police, with the building department.

We spend too much of the public dollar on nonessentials. The money going to the Rock Hall, $1M,. comes to mind, but I'm beginning to sound like a broken record on that count.

--TimFerris

  http://blog.cleveland.com/pdworld/2009/03/what_local_bloggers_are_saying_17.htm

What local bloggers are saying about ... the downtown shooting

Posted by jkroll [at] plaind [dot] com March 02, 2009 06:38AM

l

From today's Plain Dealer--initially...no charges filed (see print edition)--watch this case: