Crime. WTF peoples?!?

"Bailout by Shank" The now negotiation tool on the streets. bitch.

Generally aside from things happening at the moment, I have no interest in writing about violence and crime in the city. Not out of disinterest, but simply because we're nearly ten million people, mostly in tight spaces and close proximity and crime is very likely. No matter how many of us dance in the streets after an election, there's always the chance of that one dick, still hanging in the bar, who's digging through strewn coats looking for their idea of change.

Crime happens, and while we should work toward it being a thing of the past like Bloomberg and superblocks, until we do away with crime, it shouldn't surprise us. I mean not for nothing but in a city of this size and circumstance you got personal beefs, financial fall-outs, road rages, idiot athletes, then toss in the amount of drunken partying potential crime victims teetering through the night and top it all off with the fact that this city has the highest disparity between wealthy and poor who live in the closest proximity (less than a mile separates Housing Projects and Luxury Condos on Park Av in the Manhattan) and it's a wonder any of us make it home at all. In fact those of us who do make it home should encounter rats, pigeons and fat raccoons sitting on our futons and Murphy beds, watching our Mac enabled netflix and ordering soy sausages from fresh direct while quizzically asking us what we're still doing here. So crime, even in post 9/11, post gentrified, post Obama NYC, shouldn't surprise us.

Unless it's happening more often.

Maybe it's those last two items in my rant, the financial crisis and proximity (not the rats or fresh direct) that are the catalyst. But even to my jaded eye, people are seeming extra desperate and foul these days. I don't claim to know how much current events are affecting the minds and pockets of New Yorkers, maybe it's the suggestion of financial crisis, if not the real thing that has seeped into the minds of the weak and not well off.

How else do you explain this story "Man, 55, Is Shot to Death Delivering Meals for Charity" [NYT]. This is an old story, (from Nov10th) I don't know why I just noticed it today but I'm outraged just the same.

Basically the story is a man goes to a housing project in Brownsville to DELIVER FOOD TO THE HUNGRY, and he's shot dead?!? REALLY??

So it's not safe to volunteer?!? Somebody tell Obama!

No, we can't accept this. Fuck outta here with that, whoever did that shit is a depraved animal. straight up barbarism. No excuse.

Which makes me ask out loud, WTF is going on lately? In the last week you have a holiday shopper stampede at Wal-Mart resulting in some poor temp getting trampled to death, and reports say it was instigated by a shouting argument about who was "cutting in line" That was the cause? Arguing about who cut the line? Like when you were trying to buy the last pack of "Butter Crunch" cookies from the Junior High School cafeteria?

People?! are we people?!?

Then in Bedford-Stuyvestant you got the equally sad and depraved:
I-can't-get-no-transfer-for-free?-okay-umma-punch-you-and-leav---no-wait-umma-shank-you-like-an-extra-on-Oz-to-get-my-angst-out mentality.

Stabbing the bus driver who let you ride free, because after your free ride, he wouldn't give you a $2 transfer, essential paying you for your theft of service? What street was this mad man from, wall street? Really, was the assailant from a hedge fund? That's some really insane profit taking. Is this the point we're at, Bailout by Shank?

In Fort Greene, in October a broad day light gun battle between three people spilled into a beauty parlor around the corner from the James E. Davis building (although for what it's worth, this story sounded less random than the others and more like like no honor among thieves)

James E. Davis who was a community organizer that held rallies in Brooklyn against gun violence (and crime in general) was later elected to city council and months after gunned down by a rival in the council chamber. In November stray shots rang out on Hanson and South Portland, around the corner from the aforementioned shootout, and while it seems nobody was hit and the two incidents aren't related (it was late) the wild gunfire hit the James Davis building on corner shattering the windows of the museum, Mocada located on the first floor. That of all buildings this one is hit by random gunfire makes it even more of an affront.

This isn't what I intended to write about and I accept it's become a rant but that story about the guy delivering food just did it for me, especially when I've read so many stories recently about how food banks are struggling to help communities in need, many in Brooklyn and the like, and then this, fuck man I dunno...

I'm not writing to prophesy doom, or divide and disdain but really man, I wanna know what the fuck is this? These people regardless of what motivates them, are harboring some animalistic tendencies. Which frankly I hate admitting, because the preps might be young men or woman of color and we know how forces will leap on the chance to cast all of us in the same hole as the worse of us. But maybe we can do it now, maybe with an Obama in office, with something as attractive in our society as that we can get over whatever stigma maybe, wade through the stank of "dirty laundry", look at this ugliness and have a louder conversation to deal with what is happening to segments of our community.

So is this all a reality? Besides an increase in rambling blogs, are people acting out in more publicly aggravated ways?

Really, what the fuck, people?