Highbrow Magazine - crime https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/crime en How a 1920 Wall Street Bombing Tanked the Career of a Famous Detective https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/24472-how-wall-street-bombing-tanked-career-famous-detective <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Wed, 02/14/2024 - 12:37</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1detective_depositphotos.jpg?itok=Daq8Cnaz"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1detective_depositphotos.jpg?itok=Daq8Cnaz" width="480" height="270" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">“There are about 25 dead and about 200 hurt and some are very badly hurt,” Charles Scully, head of the Bureau of Investigation (BI) Radical Division in New York, wrote in a memorandum during the evening of September 16, 1920. The BI was the forerunner of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), and they were tasked with investigating the bombing that a few hours earlier had rocked Wall Street, sending the city into a frenzy. Scully was right about the number injured but wrong about the number dead. The death toll would eventually rise to 38. </span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">William J. Flynn was in Washington when word reached him about the bombing. Flynn was a celebrated law enforcement official known as the “Bulldog Detective,” for his tenacity in investigating and solving crimes that stymied other law enforcement personnel. He had been named director of the BI in 1919. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer immediately put him in charge of the federal investigation, which involved about 5,000 government detectives connected to the Department of Justice, Treasury Department, Post Office, and Bureau of Immigration. </span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">Of all the different investigators that would become involved in the case, there was one that Flynn knew would make life hard for him. William J. Burns was as famous as Flynn, if not more so. The two men didn’t like each other, even though they had much in common. They were both Irish and stubborn and loved media attention. They willingly granted interviews to reporters, wrote stories about their exploits, and delved into the movie business. They also even worked together for a brief time at the Secret Service. But whereas Flynn was more concerned with serving his country in government positions than making money in the private sector, Burns was the opposite. He had an entrepreneurial spirit and became a confidante of the rich and powerful. And while Flynn was never tainted by any type of scandal, Burns, who was six years older, dealt with scandals throughout his career. </span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">In 1909, Burns established his own private detective agency. The height of his fame came in 1911 when he identified the culprits behind a bomb attack at the<em> Los Angeles Times</em> building a year before. The bombing generated headlines across the country. It was the worst act of domestic terrorism at that time, only to be surpassed 10 years later by the Wall Street bombing. </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><img src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/1wallstreet.jpg" /></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">But it wasn’t all smooth sailing for Burns following his success with that case. In 1916, he almost lost his New York State private detective license after being found guilty of wiretapping the offices of a legal firm on behalf of one of his clients, J. P. Morgan and Company. He was fined $100, but his conviction was reversed on appeal. </span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">By the time of the Wall Street bombing, though, Burns had lost a lot of his luster. He needed it to get back in the limelight and generate the praise and acclaim that he had grown accustomed to. Investigating the bombing could also mean more lucrative contracts for his private detective agency.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">As is often true when there are multiple witnesses to a crime, there were varying accounts of the explosion. A sample of 21 witnesses did, however, reveal some points of agreement. Most of them said that a horse-drawn wagon was parked in front of or near the U.S. Assay Office, which was located on Wall Street at the time, and that it was old and dilapidated, its paint worn off. The color of the body of the wagon was dark or dirty gray, while the wheels were dark red. The horse, a dark bay, was aged, thin, and in poor condition, its front knees badly sprung. The witnesses could not, however, provide sufficient information about the most important clue the investigators were after: a description of the driver.32 </span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">Investigators had already checked out the businesses that the victims of the bombing were involved with and were able to determine that none of them owned or operated the horse-drawn wagon that exploded. That meant that whoever set off the bomb had gotten away. Flynn was optimistic that the perpetrators would be found. “We’ll get them,” he told the press. From the start, he was convinced that it was the Galleanists who were behind the attack. The Galleanists were a radical anarchist sect, founded by Luigi Gealleani, an Italian national who took up residence in the U.S., and was later deported in the Palmer Raids.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">Flynn was under enormous pressure to solve the case. The New York Chamber of Commerce labeled the bombing an “act of war.” The <em>New York Times </em>wrote in an editorial that the perpetrators “will be hunted down in their lairs like wild animals. Every device and stratagem of detection will be put in operation against them.” Newspapers across the country reported daily on the progress (or lack of it) in the investigations. Expectations were high that Flynn would be the right man for the job. “Chief William Flynn, the famous ‘Big Bill’ hurried to New York to assume personally the task of the unraveling of the mystery,” the <em>Los Angeles Times </em>reported. Another newspaper ran a story about the bombing under the heading “William J. Flynn Will Run Down Conspirators.” And the <em>New York Daily News </em>wrote, “William J. Flynn, chief of the Bureau of Investigation of the Department of Justice—big, fat, friendly, conservative and yet generous with information (‘a whale of a man’ . . . )—will within twenty-four hours, it is believed, hold in the toil of the law those responsible for the Wall street disaster.” </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><img src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/2wallstreet.jpg" /></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">Investigators could not determine exactly how long the wagon was parked in the street before the explosion. One witness said he saw a delivery wagon driving toward the Assay Office about one minute before the explosion occurred. Flynn believed the driver abandoned the wagon on Wall Street after setting the timer for the bomb a few minutes ahead. Another witness, however, said he saw a wagon parked unattended outside the Assay Office for at least an hour. If true, then it meant an old, beat-up wagon with a sickly-looking horse had been parked in the heart of Wall Street without arousing suspicion about its presence there. The <em>Wall Street Journal </em>criticized city officials for not policing the Financial District, which might have prevented the attack. </span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">Since the horse suspected of drawing the bomb-laden wagon to Wall Street had been killed, investigators set out to determine whether any stables were missing a horse, either one that had been stolen or one that was never returned after being used on September 16. </span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">Photostat copies were also made of two horseshoes with specific markings that were found outside Trinity Church near the bomb site. These were shown to approximately 4,000 blacksmiths along the Eastern Seaboard. One of them, Gaetano DeGrazio, whose shop was in the Little Italy section of Manhattan, recognized them and told agents he had made the shoes and shod the horse the day before the bombing for a man he described as Sicilian. Flynn arranged for DeGrazio to view hundreds of photos of anarchists with the hope that he might be able to identify his customer. To make sure, however, that DeGrazio wasn’t in some way connected to the bombing, Flynn had a BI confidential informant, code name “P-137,” watch his shop in case any suspicious people visited or in the eventuality that DeGrazio tried to get in touch with anybody who could be of interest to the bureau. The informant reported that he observed nothing of importance during his surveillances. </span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">While DeGrazio was viewing the photographs, investigators were busy on many different fronts. One involved trying to locate the person or persons who had bought a set of rubber letter stamps that were used to make propaganda leaflets found in a mailbox (without any envelopes or addresses) just a few blocks from Broad and Wall streets on the day of the explosion. These leaflets, which Flynn described as “a challenge to the American Government,” were similar in message to those that were discovered at all the sites of earlier bombings tied to anarchists. Rubber-stamped in red ink on white paper, the Wall Street leaflets warned of additional attacks: “Remember, we will not tolerate any longer. Free the political prisoners, or it will be sure death for all of you.” They were signed “American Anarchist Fighters.” This signature convinced Flynn that the same group of Italian anarchists (the Galleanists) had composed both sets of leaflets. “You can see,” he said, “they have simply added American to their title now.” (The flyers found at the sites of previous bombings were signed “The Anarchist Fighters.”) “The similarity of the circulars makes available all our knowledge of the gang who committed the outrages last year,” Flynn also said.</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><img src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/4wallstreet.jpg" /></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">Investigators learned that the R. H. Manufacturing Company of Springfield, Massachusetts, had produced the set of rubber stamps used to create the leaflets. This discovery was made because the word “for” in the leaflet (“death for all of you”) had a distinct style found only in “The Easy Sign Maker #0” rubber letter set that the company manufactured. More than 2,000 retail stores were visited by agents in the New York area to see to whom they might have sold such sets. No results were obtained from this part of the investigation. The same was true for stores visited in other cities throughout the East and Midwest.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">As the weeks and months passed by with no progress in the investigation, Flynn decided on a long shot. He would send one of his informants undercover to Italy to try to track down Luigi Galleani and elicit information from him about the bombing. This was ironic, of course, because had the government not deported Galleani in 1919 in the infamous Palmer Raids, they wouldn’t have had to look for him overseas.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">The task of finding Galleani fell to Salvatore Clemente, a former counterfeiter turned police operative whom Flynn had worked with in the past. Clemente, posing as an anarchist from Paterson, New Jersey, was given the code name “Mull” and set sail for Italy, his home country, at the end of December 1920. When he arrived in Rome, an American diplomat gave him photos of Galleani and other Italian anarchists. He then went to Milan and met up with a Galleanist he knew from America, Antonio Mazzini.  Mazzini informed Clemente that Galleani was nowhere to be found in Italy, having fled the country to avoid arrest by the Italian authorities after resuming the printing of his newspaper, <em>Cronaca Sovversiva</em>, in Turin. Clemente was able to locate Galleani’s sister Carolina in Vercelli, who also told him that her brother “had to leave the country.” Having not achieved his mission, a disappointed Clemente returned to the United States in March 1921.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">By that time, Flynn was feeling increased pressure for not yet solving the Wall Street bombing. Many people wondered if it would ever be solved. And there were media reports that Flynn would soon be replaced as director of the BI by none other than William Burns. A new president had taken office, and he appointed a new attorney general, and neither of those developments boded well for Flynn. </span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">Flynn, meanwhile, was working on what he hoped would be the big break in the case. Early in January, he began circulating to chiefs of police and postmasters in Eastern cities a composite drawing of who he suspected was the driver of the horse-drawn wagon that exploded on Wall Street. Gaetano DeGrazio, the blacksmith who shod the horse’s shoes, identified two photographs from the hundreds of anarchists he was shown, claiming they somewhat resembled the driver who brought the horse to his shop. It was, however, as historian Beverly Gage points out, only “educated guesswork.” </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><img src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/5wallstreet.jpg" /></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">DeGrazio worked with a commercial artist combining the two photos to make a composite drawing, suggesting changes to various features along the way. The wash drawings were then photographed and circulated to the select audience. Included with the photograph was a physical description of the driver as being “apparently Italian, 28 or 30 years; 5 feet 6 inches; medium build; broad shoulders; dark hair; dark complexion; small dark mustache, which at the date of the explosion represented about two weeks’ growth. He wore a gold cap, pulled down over his forehead, and khaki shirt turned in at the neck, as indicated in photograph.” The communication to the police chiefs and postmasters was supposed to be confidential, but the <em>New York Herald </em>got hold of one and published it on March 31. Other newspapers then reported on the story. “I have no knowledge as to how or where the newspaper obtained the circular and photograph,” Flynn wrote in a memo to Harry M. Daugherty, the new Attorney General, in April.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">Flynn informed Daugherty that he had received many replies regarding the circular he sent out (he did not mention whether any information came from the newspaper publishing the material) and that all of the replies “have been or are under investigation.” One of the leads involved a person named Vincenzo Leggio, but the bureau soon learned that Leggio had moved to Italy in the spring of 1920. There were no reports that he had ever returned. But when police in Scranton, Pennsylvania, arrested an Italian anarchist named Tito Ligi for draft evasion, they found what they said were sash weights identical to the shrapnel used in the Wall Street bomb in the back room of a restaurant where Ligi once worked. Flynn now thought that he had finally gotten his man, given the similarity in the last names, and that Ligi was actually Vincenzo Leggio.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">Even though the so-called sash weights turned out to be irregular blocks of iron and steel that Italians in the city used for playing a game, Flynn still summoned to the BI offices in New York a number of people who had previously stated that they had seen the driver of the bomb-laden wagon. These witnesses were shown 25 photos, Ligi among them. Two of the witnesses (Thomas Smith, a former New York Fire Department lieutenant, and James Nally, a stockbroker’s clerk) picked out Ligi’s photo “as that of a man closely resembling the driver.” But when the photograph was shown to DeGrazio, the blacksmith, he said Ligi was not the man who came to his shop the day before the bombing. Nevertheless, Flynn arranged for Smith and Nally, as well as a few other witnesses, to travel to Scranton to identify Ligi in a police lineup.</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><img src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/3wallstreet.jpg" /></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">Only Smith was able to make the identification. The other witnesses did not recognize Ligi. Smith, however, now claimed that Ligi was not the driver of the wagon but rather a person he saw talking to the actual driver about a half-hour before the explosion. New York police detectives had little faith in Smith’s account, claiming he was nowhere near Wall Street at that time on September 16. The case against Ligi soon fell apart, with Flynn admitting publicly that the BI had no evidence connecting Ligi to the bombing. But Ligi was still sentenced to one year in prison for draft evasion.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">By now, Flynn was like a boxer, far behind in points going into the last round against his opponent. Only a knockout would win the bout for him. With Burns waiting in the wings, Flynn likely knew he needed to solve the case soon to keep his job. Especially since the current Attorney General Daugherty was an old friend of his nemesis, William Burns. His last hope came around the same time that Ligi went to prison. A man named Giuseppe De Filippis was arrested in early May in Bayonne, New Jersey, because of his alleged resemblance to the composite drawing of the wagon driver. Witnesses were once again brought in, this time to the Bayonne jail, to identify him as the driver. Once again, inexplicably, Smith was among the witnesses. He now identified De Filippis as the driver, as did two other witnesses. But once again, the case fell apart, as there was no other evidence against De Filippis, who was not an anarchist. He claimed that he was at a Bayonne railroad siding on September 16, hoping to be hired to haul California grapes that were being unloaded there from a refrigerated car. Several witnesses confirmed his story.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">Flynn remained in his job for most of the summer. But the ax fell on August 18, when Daugherty announced that Burns would be the new BI director. He told reporters that Flynn had not yet resigned but that he had been notified of Burns’s appointment. Daugherty had sent Flynn a telegram to his New York office informing him of the decision while Flynn was on vacation in Saratoga. </span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">Burns held onto his job for few more years but was eventually forced out in May 1924 after a major scandal involving spying on a U.S. senator. Burns had used BI agents to try to gather evidence of criminal activity on the part of Senator Burton K. Wheeler from Montana after the senator called for Congress to investigate abuses in the Justice Department. Attorney General Daugherty was also forced to resign for his involvement in the scandal. </span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">The last time the FBI looked into the bombing was in 1944, and once again, no results were obtained. In a summarizing memo to headquarters that year, the New York office repeated the contention made just a month after the attack by Agent Scully—namely, that “Italian Anarchists or Italian Terrorists” were responsible for the bombing.</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>Adapted from </strong><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Bulldog-Detective-William-Americas-Terrorists/dp/1633888657/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1F5EP55H6KS7Q&amp;keywords=the+bulldog+detective+william+j.+flynn&amp;qid=1707856913&amp;sprefix=the+bulldog%2Caps%2C97&amp;sr=8-1" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline"><strong><em>The Bulldog Detective: William J. Flynn and America’s First War Against the Mafia, Spies, and Terrorists</em></strong></a><strong> (Prometheus) by Jeffrey D. Simon. Published with permission. </strong></span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>Author Bio: </strong></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong><em>Jeffrey D. Simon</em></strong><em> <strong>is an internationally recognized author, lecturer, and consultant on terrorism and political violence. </strong> </em></span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>Highbrow Magazine</strong></span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>Photo Credits: </strong><a href="https://depositphotos.com/stock-photography.html" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline"><strong>Depositphotos.com</strong></a><strong>;  </strong><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wallstreetbmb.jpg" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline"><strong><em>Wikimedia Commons</em></strong></a><strong><em>; George Grantham Bain Collection (</em></strong><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Anarchist_bombings,_New_York_City.png" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline"><strong><em>Wikimedia Commons</em></strong></a><strong><em>); Library of Congress (</em></strong><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_J._Flynn,_half_length_portrait_LCCN2017648513.jpg" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline"><strong><em>Wikimedia Commons</em></strong></a><strong><em>); </em></strong><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Luigi_Galleani,_published_1910.jpg" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline"><strong><em>Wikipedia Commons</em></strong></a><strong><em>; Archives New Zealand (</em></strong><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/archivesnz/47069871774" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline"><strong><em>Flickr</em></strong></a><strong><em>, Creative Commons). </em></strong></span></span></p> <p> </p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/jeffrey-d-simon" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">jeffrey d. simon</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/bulldog-detective" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">the bulldog detective</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/1920-bombing" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">1920 bombing</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/wall-street-bombing" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">wall street bombing</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/italian-anarchists" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">italian anarchists</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/crime" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">crime</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/detectives" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">detectives</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/investigating-terrorism" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">investigating terrorism</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/new-books" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">new books</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/nonfiction" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">nonfiction</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Jeffrey D. Simon </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">In Slider</div></div></div> Wed, 14 Feb 2024 17:37:53 +0000 tara 13022 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/24472-how-wall-street-bombing-tanked-career-famous-detective#comments ‘Who Killed Vincent Chin?’ Explores a Murder Case Steeped in Injustice https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/20050-who-killed-vincent-chin-explores-murder-case-steeped-injustice <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/film-tv" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Film &amp; TV</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Sun, 06/26/2022 - 17:54</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1chin.jpg?itok=8TI1w_YL"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1chin.jpg?itok=8TI1w_YL" width="480" height="360" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">In 1982, Chinese-American Vincent Chin was beaten to near death with a baseball by Ronald Ebens in Detroit. The crime was witnessed by multiple people and Chin was braindead for a few days before dying in a hospital. Despite witnesses and evidence, Ebens and his son-in-law Michael Nitz, who helped him beat Chin, didn’t face a single day in prison. The case, its context and the aftermath were covered in the 1987 documentary “Who Killed Vincent Chin?” which has been recently re-released. </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">One of the most important aspects of the story is the context in which the attack happened. In the early 1980s, Detroit went from the automotive capital of the world to a place where unemployment was rampant. The increased competition from import cars was the catalyst for the U.S. and local governments to use the Japanese and other foreign manufacturers as a scapegoat. This led to an increase in anti-Asian-American sentiment in Detroit specifically, which American workers blamed others for their jobs disappearing.</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/2chin.jpg" style="height:600px; width:490px" typeof="foaf:Image" /></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">The documentary does a good job of setting the scene. If one were to look at the case details on paper, it would look like a random act of violence caused by unchecked rage. The initial case’s ruling drew a lot of outrage from Asian-Americans and activists across the country and beyond. It appeared as though the judge was trying to sweep it under the rug since key witnesses and even the police officers who were at the scene weren’t present for the trial and weren’t even aware it happened until after the verdict. </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">The documentary deftly covers both sides of the story with interviews. Vincent’s mother, Lily Chin, talks about her fight to make sure her son’s killers saw justice, and it’s heartbreaking to watch. </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/3chin.jpg" style="height:315px; width:600px" typeof="foaf:Image" /></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">Even Ronald Ebens is given ample screen time to talk about his feelings about the case. In his mind, he doesn’t believe that what he did was murder and continually asserts that Chin’s race had nothing to do with it, despite witnesses saying otherwise. </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">I didn’t know anything about this case prior to watching the documentary, which is strange because it seems thid would be a landmark case for social injustice and the failure of the criminal justice system. When so many people thought it would be impossible for Ebens to escape a murder charge, it happened anyway, and seeing the full story is worth it, even if it is heartbreaking and frustrating.</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>Author Bio:</strong></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong><em>Ulises Duenas is a contributing writer at</em> Highbrow Magazine.</strong></span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>For Highbrow Magazine</strong></span></span></p> <p> </p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/who-killed-vincent-chin-vincent-chin" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">who killed vincent chin? vincent chin</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/documentaries" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">documentaries</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/pbs" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">PBS</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/hate-crimes" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">hate crimes</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/murder" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">murder</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/racial-injustice" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">racial injustice</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/asian-americans" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Asian Americans</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/crime" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">crime</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/detroit" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">detroit</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/auto-industry" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">auto industry</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Ulises Duenas</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">PBS</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">In Slider</div></div></div> Sun, 26 Jun 2022 21:54:08 +0000 tara 11174 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/20050-who-killed-vincent-chin-explores-murder-case-steeped-injustice#comments The Art of Frances Glessner Lee: Shrinking Evil https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/17035-art-frances-glessner-lee-shrinking-evil <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/photography-art" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Photography &amp; Art</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Fri, 10/22/2021 - 11:00</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1glessnerlee_lorie_shaull-flickr.jpg?itok=zttDYyje"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1glessnerlee_lorie_shaull-flickr.jpg?itok=zttDYyje" width="480" height="320" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p><strong><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">“A small thing may give an analogy of great things, and show the tracks of knowledge.”</span></span></strong></p> <p><strong><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">                                                                        Lucretius, <em>De Rerum Natura</em></span></span></strong></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">Why do miniatures enthrall us?</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">A snow globe is a world within a world. Gazing inside, you see the whole universe at once. Shrinking it to fit in the palm of your hand confers an almighty power. You can shake the globe and make it snow!</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">Want to make a boy the master of the universe? Give him a model trainset. When he grows up, he can don an engineer’s cap and fill his basement with tracks and switches and stations. Locomotives will chug over tiny bridges, through tunnels, up hills and down valleys into villages. And his trains will run on time. </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">I never had a dollhouse, but I did have a miniature battery-powered oven that came with tiny baking tins and boxes of cake mix. Both prepared girls for the “women’s work” of running a full-scale household. But dollhouses are also intimate. Regardless of their pedagogical role, they’ve always been spaces in which we are meant to feel safe. </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">In the 1940s, a Chicago heiress turned the notion of a dollhouse on its head. Tapping into the power and intimacy of miniature dwellings, Frances Glessner Lee constructed 18 tiny scenes of violent death set in rooming houses, rustic cabins, garages, attics—even a nursery. Lee’s crime scene dioramas may be a trifle outdated, but time has not robbed them of any of their power.</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">Lee was born in 1878. With a fortune from International Harvester, her parents were prominent members of Chicago’s turn-of-the-century social and civic elite. The granite fortress they built on Prairie Avenue had no lawn and few windows facing the street; the basement ones were barred. As wedding gifts, Lee’s parents built her and her brother identical townhouses down the street from each other.</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/2glessnerlee_laurie_shaull-wikimedia.jpg" style="height:400px; width:600px" typeof="foaf:Image" /></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">Lee was shy and brilliant. She longed to study nursing or medicine, but her parents sent her brother to Harvard instead. Her mother and aunts tutored her at home in metalwork, sewing and domestic arts. At age twenty, Lee was forced into a society marriage from which she fled, returned, and fled again. </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">Lee’s interest in crime was spurred by her brother’s Harvard classmate, George Burgess Magrath. A medical examiner, Magrath regaled Lee with stories of real murders and became a lifelong friend. Through him, she finally found her purpose: transforming dollhouses into miniature crime scenes to train homicide investigators. </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">Lee designed and built her models to exacting standards of realism on a scale of one inch to one foot. All but one of her “nutshells” (she never called them dollhouses) is a dwelling. She drew her crimes from real cases, wrote witness statements, inserted tantalizing clues that sometimes led nowhere, and added tiny victims. Like the snow globe, shrinking her crimes into self-contained universes created the illusion that all the answers were in front of you.</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">In their tidy little home, a family lies gruesomely slain. The parents are in their bedroom, blood is spattered on the wall behind their baby’s crib, and the kitchen table is set for breakfast. The murder weapon, a rifle, lies on the floor by the table, and the phone is off the hook. But the doors are locked from inside.</span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">In a seamy rooming house, a woman is face-up in the bathtub with water from the faucet pouring onto her head. She had a history of seizures. Did she fall in, or was she drowned by one of the men who’d visited her the night before? </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">A spinster hangs from a rafter, with old letters and articles of her past strewn at her feet. But her face is bruised and scratched, and why is one of her shoes lying on the attic’s step? </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/3glessnerlee_lorie_shaull-flickr.jpg" style="height:400px; width:600px" typeof="foaf:Image" /></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">Harvard still uses Frances Glessner Lee’s nutshells in forensic seminars. As a training tool, they endure for what they make us do: observe minute details and convert them to clues, imbue tiny victims with real lives and troubling deaths, and create narratives as to who, how and why. But their lasting impact is greater. </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">By depicting murder in domestic settings and shrinking it to a 1:12 scale, Lee used the power of miniatures to amplify crime’s human dimensions. Miniaturizing savagery and rage creates an existential dread, and inviting us to peer through windows and behind doors at violence in intimate spaces makes crime personal. The new narrative Lee created is the age-old quest to understand the impossible. </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif">She didn’t want us to gape at evil. She wanted us to make it make sense. </span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>Author Bio:</strong></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong><em>Stephanie Kane is the author of</em> <a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/object-lessons-stephanie-kane/1140145084" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline">Object Lessons</a>.</strong></span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>For Highbrow Magazine</strong></span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><strong>Image Sources:</strong></span></span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><em>Laurie Shaull (</em><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/number7cloud/33248126936" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline"><em>Flickr</em></a><em>, Creative Commons)</em></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><em>Laurie Shaull (</em><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nutshell_Studies_of_Unexplained_Death,_Red_Bedroom.jpg" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline"><em>Wikimedia</em></a><em>, Creative Commons)</em></span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:18px"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif"><em>Laurie Shaull (</em><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/number7cloud/33247968546" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline"><em>Flickr</em></a><em>, Creative Commons)</em></span></span></p> <p> </p> <p> </p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/frances-glessner-lee" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Frances Glessner Lee</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/dioramas" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">dioramas</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/evil" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">evil</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/crime" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">crime</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/art" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">art</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/dollhouse" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">dollhouse</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/stephanie-kane" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Stephanie Kane</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/object-lessons" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">object lessons</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/criminals" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">criminals</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Stephanie Kane</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">All images by Laurie Shaull (Flickr, Creative Commons)</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Fri, 22 Oct 2021 15:00:07 +0000 tara 10700 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/17035-art-frances-glessner-lee-shrinking-evil#comments Can the Spread of Violent Crime Be Prevented? https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/11920-can-spread-violent-crime-be-prevented <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Mon, 03/01/2021 - 15:35</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1violence_geralt-pixabay.jpg?itok=pJLZ_5TE"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1violence_geralt-pixabay.jpg?itok=pJLZ_5TE" width="480" height="339" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p>Usually, facial trauma doesn’t kill you, but it can cause significant disfigurement. Working as a maxillofacial surgeon in Glasgow in the early 2000s, Christine Goodall treated hundreds, if not thousands, of patients with injuries to the neck, face, head and jaw.</p> <p> </p> <p>Sometimes, the injuries were caused by a baseball bat, with shattered bones and bruising as bad as that from a car accident. More often than not, it was a knife. A slash across the forehead or cheek, leaving a scar etched across the face; a machete wound to the jaw, slicing through the skin and breaking the bone underneath.</p> <p> </p> <p>One young man came into the hospital in the middle of the night, with a knife wound across his face. Goodall dreaded the morning ward round the next day, when she would have to tell him that it would be impossible to reduce the appearance of the scar. But his reaction surprised her. “He was very offhand about it,” she says. “Some of his friends came to see him later that afternoon and I realized why it wasn’t going to be a problem for him – because they all had one. He’d just joined the club.” The incident has stayed with her, an indication of how bad the situation in her city had become.</p> <p> </p> <p>In 2005, the United Nations published a report declaring Scotland the most violent country in the developed world. The same year, a study by the World Health Organization of crime figures in 21 European countries showed that Glasgow was the “murder capital” of Europe. More than 1,000 people a year required treatment for facial trauma alone, many of them as the result of violence.</p> <p> </p> <p>Goodall, who has spent most of her life living and working in Glasgow, would stitch up the wounds and work to repair the damaged tissue. But for most patients, the problems continued long after they were discharged. Chronic pain, post-traumatic stress disorder, self-medication with alcohol and drugs.</p> <p> </p> <p>Often, the same people would come back through the accident and emergency departments again and again, repeated victims and perpetrators of violent attacks. “We were really good at patching injuries up,” says Goodall. “But I started to think: What can we do to prevent them coming here in the first place?”</p> <p> </p> <p>Humans engage in a wide array of risky behaviors that can lead to serious health problems: smoking, overeating, sex without protection. It has long been the accepted wisdom that doctors should encourage patients to change their behavior – give up smoking, go on a diet, use a condom – rather than wait to treat the emphysema, obesity-related heart attacks, or HIV that could be the result.</p> <p> </p> <p>Yet when it comes to violence, the discussion is often underpinned by an assumption that this is an innate and immutable behavior and that people engaging in it are beyond redemption. More often than not, solutions have been sought in the criminal justice system – through tougher sentencing, or increasing stop-and-search (despite substantial evidence that it is ineffective in reducing crime). Is enforcement the wrong tactic altogether?</p> <p> </p> <p>In 2005, Karyn McCluskey, principal analyst for Strathclyde Police, wrote a report pointing out that traditional policing was not actually reducing violence. These reports always include a list of recommendations. “One was tongue-in-cheek,” recalls Will Linden, who worked for McCluskey as an analyst at the time. “‘Do something different.’ I don’t think it was meant to stay in there. But the chief constable said, ‘Okay, go do something different.’”</p> <p> </p> <p>McCluskey’s team, led by her and her colleague John Carnochan, started by pulling together evidence on the drivers of violence. “Particularly in Scotland, it was poverty, inequality, things like toxic masculinity, alcohol use, all these factors – most of which were outside the bounds of policing,” says Linden.</p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/2violence_pxfuel.jpg" style="height:400px; width:600px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>Next, they looked around the world to find and learn from pioneering programs working to prevent violence. This was the foundation of the Violence Reduction Unit (VRU), of which Linden is now the acting director. It took elements of those programs and focused on garnering support from a range of Scottish agencies – the health service, addiction support, job centers and a host of others. Since the VRU was launched in 2005, the murder rate in Glasgow has dropped by 60 percent.</p> <p> </p> <p>The number of facial trauma patients passing through Glasgow’s hospitals has halved, Goodall says, and now stands at around 500 a year.</p> <p> </p> <p>The VRU’s strategy is described as a “public health” approach to preventing violence. This refers to a whole school of thought that suggests that beyond the obvious health problems that result from violence – the psychological trauma and physical injuries – the violent behavior itself is an epidemic that spreads from person to person.</p> <p> </p> <p>One of the primary indicators that someone will carry out an act of violence is first being the victim of one. The idea that violence spreads between people, reproducing itself and shifting group norms, explains why one locality might see more stabbings or shootings than another area with many of the same social problems.</p> <p> </p> <p>“Despite the fact that violence has always been present, the world does not have to accept it as an inevitable part of the human condition,” says the WHO guidance on violence prevention.</p> <p> </p> <p>It says that “violence can be prevented and its impact reduced, in the same way that public health efforts have prevented and reduced pregnancy-related complications, workplace injuries, infectious diseases, and illness resulting from contaminated food and water in many parts of the world. The factors that contribute to violent responses – whether they are factors of attitude and behavior or related to larger social, economic, political and cultural conditions – can be changed.”</p> <p> </p> <p>But across much of the world, being tough on crime is a vote winner, which makes this a hard sell. How did Glasgow do it? As they investigated what it actually means to treat violence as a health problem, the VRU looked first to Chicago.</p> <p> </p> <p>In the 1980s and early 1990s, American epidemiologist Gary Slutkin was in Somalia, one of six doctors working across 40 refugee camps containing a million people. His focus was on containing the spread of tuberculosis and cholera.</p> <p> </p> <p>Containing infectious diseases relies heavily on data. First, public health officials map out exactly where the most transmissions of the disease are occurring. Then they can focus on containing the spread in these areas. Often, this containment happens by getting people to change their behavior so that a rapid effect can be seen even when larger structural factors can’t be tackled.</p> <p> </p> <p>For instance, diarrhoeal disease is often in large part caused by poor sanitation and water supplies. It takes a long time to improve plumbing systems – but in the meantime, thousands of lives can be saved by giving people oral rehydration solutions.</p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/1_edinburgh_guy_percival_publicdomainpictures.jpg" style="height:400px; width:600px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>Slutkin followed these steps to contain outbreaks in the Somali refugee camps, and again later, when he worked for the WHO on AIDS prevention. Whatever the exact nature of the infectious disease in question, the steps to contain it were roughly the same. “What do they have in common? All of these things spread,” Slutkin tells me in his office in Chicago. “Heart disease doesn’t spread, strokes don’t spread.”</p> <p> </p> <p>Changing behavioral norms is far more effective than simply giving people information. To change behavior – whether it’s using rehydration solutions, avoiding dirty water or using condoms – credible messengers are essential.</p> <p> </p> <p>“In all of these outbreaks, we used outreach workers from the same group [as the target population],” says Slutkin. “Refugees in Somalia to reach refugees with TB or cholera, sex workers to reach sex workers with AIDS, moms to reach moms on breastfeeding and diarrhoeal management.”</p> <p> </p> <p>After more than a decade working overseas, Slutkin returned to his native Chicago in the late 1990s, exhausted from the perpetual travel and constant exposure to death. “I wanted a break from all these epidemics,” he says. It hadn’t occurred to him that America had difficulties, too. He had been consumed, for years, by the panic of epidemics and the struggles of poorly developed countries. But he returned to a different kind of problem: a skyrocketing homicide rate.</p> <p> </p> <p>His ideas about tackling this problem began as a nerdy project, born of the obsession with graphs and charts he had developed abroad: He gathered maps and data on gun violence in Chicago. As he did so, the parallels with the maps of disease outbreaks he was accustomed to were unavoidable. “The epidemic curves are the same, the clustering. In fact, one event leads to another, which is diagnostic of a contagious process. Flu causes more flu, colds cause more colds, and violence causes more violence.”</p> <p> </p> <p>This was a radical departure from mainstream thinking about violence at the time, which primarily focused on enforcement. “The idea that’s wrong is that these people are ‘bad’ and we know what to do with them, which is punish them,” says Slutkin. “That’s fundamentally a misunderstanding of the human. Behavior is formed by modeling and copying. When you’re in a health lens, you don’t blame. You try to understand, and you aim for solutions.”</p> <p> </p> <p>He spent the next few years trying to gather funding for a pilot project that would use the same steps against violence as the WHO takes to control outbreaks of cholera, TB or HIV. It would have three main prongs: interrupt transmission, prevent future spread, and change group norms.</p> <p> </p> <p>In 2000, it launched in the West Garfield Park neighborhood of Chicago. Within the first year, there was a 67 percent drop in shootings. More funding came, more neighborhoods were piloted. Everywhere it launched, violence dropped by at least 40 percent. The approach began to be replicated in other cities.</p> <p> </p> <p>“When we were trying to control outbreaks of HIV, it was all about changing your thinking about whether you’d have risky sexual behaviour,” says Slutkin. “That’s much harder to change than violent behavior. People don’t want to change sexual behavior, but they don’t actually want to have violent behavior.” Although there were many deeper structural factors contributing to Chicago’s violence – poverty, lack of jobs, exclusion, racism and segregation – Slutkin argued that lives could be saved by changing the behavior of individuals and shifting group norms.</p> <p> </p> <p>As in many places, discussion of violence in Chicago often takes on a highly racialized tone. The city is deeply racially segregated. Many South Side neighborhoods are over 95 percent African American; others are more than 95 percent Mexican American. Most of these areas are severely socioeconomically deprived and have suffered years of state neglect. Homicide rates can be up to 10 times higher than in more affluent, predominantly white areas of Chicago.</p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/3violence_j_schikaneder_painting_wikimedia.jpg" style="height:375px; width:600px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>But Slutkin emphasizes that this clustering is less to do with race and more to do with patterns of behavior – usually among a small section of the population, usually young and male – that are transmitted between people. “Language dictates the way people respond, so we don’t use words like ‘criminal’ or ‘gang’ or ‘thug’ – we talk about contagion, transmission, health,” he says.</p> <p> </p> <p>Today, Slutkin’s organization, Cure Violence, is based in the public health department of the University of Illinois, Chicago. A poster in the corridor bears a photo of a young boy, with the slogan “Don’t shoot. I want to grow up” underneath.</p> <p> </p> <p>The organization now works in 13 Chicago neighborhoods, and versions of the program run in New York, Baltimore and Los Angeles, as well as in other countries around the world. It trains local organizations  that then find credible people in the area to do the work.</p> <p> </p> <p>Although there is a level of debate about Cure Violence’s use of statistics, the method’s overall effectiveness has been shown by numerous academic studies. A 2009 study at Northwestern University found that crime went down in all neighborhoods examined where the program was active.</p> <p> </p> <p>In 2012, researchers at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health looked at four parts of Baltimore that were running the program, and found that shootings and homicides fell in all four. The results are frequently striking. In San Pedro Sula, Honduras, the first five Cure Violence zones saw a drop from 98 shootings during January–May 2014 to just 12 in the same period in 2015.</p> <p> </p> <p>Demetrius Cole is 43, a gentle, softly-spoken man who spent 12 years in prison. He grew up in an area of Chicago afflicted by violence and, at the age of 15, saw his best friend die in a shooting. Nonetheless, he had a stable home life and stayed out of gangs. He planned to join the Marines.</p> <p> </p> <p>When he was 19, a close friend bought a new car. Some other boys from the neighborhood tried to steal the car, and they shot Cole’s friend. Cole didn’t stop to think. He retaliated. In those few minutes, his life changed entirely. While his friend was left paralyzed, unable to work again, Cole was sent to prison for his response.</p> <p> </p> <p>“I reacted off emotion like you see out here today,” he says. Since October 2017, he has been working for Cure Violence in West Englewood, a South Side district of Chicago. He finds people in the same situation he was once in, and tries to persuade them to pause. “We try to show them it is a dead end. I tell them, there’s only two ways this thing is going to end. You’re going to go to jail or you’re going to die.”</p> <p> </p> <p>Cole works as a “violence interrupter,” employed by Cure Violence to intervene in the aftermath of a shooting to prevent retaliations, and to calm people down before a dispute escalates to violence.</p> <p> </p> <p>“My job is to interrupt transmissions,” Cole tells me. “We try to come up with different kinds of ways to deter these kids from the ways they’re used to thinking, and give them a different outlook.”</p> <p> </p> <p><img alt="" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/1chicago_south_side_-_john_h_white_-_flickr.jpg" style="height:405px; width:600px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>Violence interrupters use numerous techniques, some borrowed from cognitive behavioral therapy. Cole reels them off. “Constructive shadowing”, which means echoing people’s words back to them; “babysitting,” which is simply staying with someone until they have cooled down; and emphasizing consequences. “A lot of kids don’t know where their next meal is coming from, their mother’s getting high,” says Cole. “People say everything is common sense. No. Sense is not common to a lot of people.”</p> <p> </p> <p>Interrupters’ ability to be effective depends on their credibility. Many, like Cole, have served long prison sentences and can speak from experience. Most also have a close relationship with the local community. They can respond when a shooting takes place, for instance by convincing loved ones not to retaliate. But they are also aware if conflict is brewing between two individuals or rival groups, and can move to defuse the tension or suggest peaceful alternatives.</p> <p> </p> <p>“We may not be able to reach everybody, but for the few people we do reach, it’s a beautiful thing,” says Cole. He laughs as he talks about a young man he’s been working with. “He was a mess. All the other little guys looked up to him. He was the man over there, always fighting. His transformation was just – now all the other guys see him working, and they want to come into the center to get a job.”</p> <p> </p> <p>Grand Crossing, another South Side area, is the site of one of Cure Violence’s newest centers. Opened in December 2017, it sits on a busy street, a nondescript shop front deliberately chosen as a neutral space for different rival groups.</p> <p> </p> <p>When I visit one spring afternoon, a boy in his late teens with a visible facial scar sits in the reception. In the office, staff are playing dominoes, the baseball game on the TV in the background. Young men from the area pass in and out to speak to their outreach workers and use the computers.</p> <p> </p> <p>Demeatreas Whatley, the site supervisor, is catching up on paperwork in the back office. Whatley has been working for Cure Violence on and off since 2008, when he got out of prison after 17 years and decided he needed to do something different with his life. His first assignment was in Woodlawn, the area he grew up in.</p> <p> </p> <p>Ignoring the protestations of his family, he moved onto the block worst afflicted by gang tension, and worked day and night to build up “peace treaties” between the feuding groups of young people. This entailed initially convincing the two groups to stay out of each other’s way, and then gradually working on individuals to shift their views about violence and help them to find work or get back into education. “I knew I was making a difference when I saw the old folks back out on the porch again drinking their coffees,” he says.</p> <p> </p> <p>Although it must always be adapted for each location, Cure Violence follows roughly the same steps when establishing itself in a new place.</p> <p> </p> <p>First, map the violence to see where it clusters. Whatley shows me an A4 photocopy of a map of Grand Crossing, with specks indicating where homicides were taking place. The streets and blocks where the specks cluster are the main focus. Next, hire credible workers with a local connection. “The type of guys we look for are respected in the community, and might already be stopping fights, trying to help guys calm down their nonsense,” he says.</p> <p> </p> <p>These interrupters patrol the streets on their beat, getting to know shopkeepers, neighbors – and building links with the young men and women deemed to be the highest risk. “They’re able to know if it’s been a fight or if there’s a fight brewing,” says Whatley. “That’s what makes violence interrupters successful. You have to be there.”</p> <p> </p> <p><strong><em>This is an excerpt from an article originally published in </em></strong><a href="https://mosaicscience.com/story/violence-crime-knife-chicago-glasgow-gang-epidemic-gun-health-prevention/" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline"><strong><em>Mosaic</em></strong></a><strong><em>. It is republished here with permission under a Creative Commons license. </em></strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Highbrow Magazine</strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Image Sources:</strong></p> <p><em>--</em><a href="https://www.pxfuel.com/en/free-photo-qnebj" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline"><em>Pxfuel</em></a><em> (Creative Commons)</em></p> <p><em>--J. Schikaneder painting, 1800s (</em><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jakub_Schikaneder_-_Murder_in_the_House.JPG" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline"><em>Wikimedia</em></a><em>, Creative Commons)</em></p> <p><em>--Guy Percival (</em><a href="https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=245005&amp;picture=edinburgh-shopping-victoria-street" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline"><em>publicdomainpictures</em></a><em>, Creative Commons)</em></p> <p><em>--John H. White (</em><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/8674882223" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline"><em>Flickr,</em></a><em> Creative Commons)</em></p> <p><em>--</em><a href="https://pixabay.com/illustrations/police-crime-scene-blue-light-850054/" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline"><em>Geralt</em></a><em> (Pixabay, Creative Commons)</em></p> <p> </p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/violence" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">violence</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/crime" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">crime</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/stopping-crime" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">stopping crime</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/rise-crime" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">rise in crime</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/police" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">police</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/law-enforcement" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">law enforcement</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/violent-crimes" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">violent crimes</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/glasgow" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">glasgow</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/chicago" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Chicago</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/gangs" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">gangs</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/gang-violence" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">gang violence</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Samira Shackle</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Mon, 01 Mar 2021 20:35:03 +0000 tara 10196 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/11920-can-spread-violent-crime-be-prevented#comments Trump Is No Stranger to Law-and-Order Baiting https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/5919-trump-no-stranger-law-and-order-baiting <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Sun, 07/24/2016 - 14:22</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/6trump.jpg?itok=nollMwku"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/6trump.jpg?itok=nollMwku" width="480" height="312" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p><strong>From our content partner <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2016/07/trump-is-no-stranger-to-law-and-order-baiting.php">New America Media</a></strong>:</p> <p> </p> <p>When GOP presidential contender Donald Trump shouts that he’s the “law-and-order candidate,” he is pilfering the line that George Wallace, Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton worked to death during their White House bids. The law-and-order line is heavy with racially coded images of rampant black crime, and this is a surefire way to pander to fearful suburban whites.</p> <p> </p> <p>But Trump actually has his own history, apart from presidential racial-scare politics, of being a self-styled tough-guy on crime.</p> <p> </p> <p>The starting point was the now infamous Central Park Five case of 1989. The five were young African-American and Latino youths charged with the rape and beating of a white female jogger in New York’s Central Park. They were convicted and imprisoned for more than a decade. The five were innocent. Their confessions were obtained illegally, through two days of nonstop police intimidation, coercion and lies. There was no physical evidence to connect them to the crime. The actual assailant eventually confessed and the city settled a multimillion-dollar wrongful imprisonment lawsuit with the five.</p> <p> </p> <p>Trump sniffed an opportunity with the case. With much fanfare when the case hit the news, he shelled out $85,000 to four newspapers to splash an ad demanding the death penalty for the five. Trump made clear that he was not just outraged over the brutal rape and assault but that the case typified a city under siege from lawlessness and that it was time to crack down. The heavy-handed welding of the death penalty was the only way to send the get-tough message to criminals. He minced no words in his ad: “I want to hate these muggers and murderers.”</p> <p> </p> <p>The ad was a not-so-subtle effort to prod state legislators to override then-New York Governor Mario Cuomo’s annual veto of a proposed law to reinstate the death penalty in the state. Trump did not budge one inch from his tough-guy stance on crime, even after the admission that the Central Park Five were innocent. There were no apologies, no recriminations, no second guesses from him about the horror that if New York had had the death penalty at the time and the five men had been executed at his prodding, he would have had the blood of innocent men on his hands.</p> <p> </p> <p>Instead, he doubled down and lambasted the city’s payout to the men as a disgrace and politics at its lowest form. The bald implication was that the men were still guilty and got a reward for their crime.</p> <p> </p> <p>Trump returned to tout the death penalty again last December when he screamed to a meeting of the New England Police Benevolent Association that one of the first things that he’d do if elected would be to sign an executive order urging judges and juries to automatically slap the death penalty on anyone who kills a cop. It was pure hyperbole since only states can apply the death penalty for the murder of local police and the federal government has jurisdiction over the death penalty in a limited number of proscribed federal cases.</p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/7trump.jpg" style="height:351px; width:625px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>But Trump wasn’t finished. He solemnly pledged that he’d never let police officers down and that he’d do everything he could to get the police even more military-style equipment and vehicles. This was an obvious slap at the increasing call by many civil rights and civil liberties advocates and even a promise by President Obama to review the heavy-duty surplus military armor and weapons that police departments have gotten free or at bargain prices from the Defense Department.</p> <p> </p> <p>Trump masterfully played to the law-and-order crowd with the death penalty and further militarization of police departments to make the political point that he was the candidate who’d crack down on crime and violence. He got the full-throated backing of the New England police group.</p> <p> </p> <p>The San Bernardino massacre and the murder of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge are simply the horrid backdrop to the line that Trump has honed over time about America being supposedly under siege from lawlessness in the streets and the need to do whatever it takes to stop it.</p> <p> </p> <p>Trump didn’t need Wallace or Nixon to know that the law-and-order pitch can potentially pay rich political dividends. He first touched a nerve with it in New York decades ago and he’ll play on it again and again in the fall, painting a picture of streets in anarchy, and tarring Clinton and the Democrats as softies on crime. He’s no stranger to that scare tactic.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong><em>Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is the author of Let’s Stop Denying Made in America Terrorism (Amazon Kindle). He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on Radio One. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles and the Pacifica Network.</em></strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>From our content partner <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2016/07/trump-is-no-stranger-to-law-and-order-baiting.php">New America Media</a></strong></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/trump-1" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">trump</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/donald-trump" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Donald Trump</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/race" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">race</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/police-brutality" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">police brutality</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/crime" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">crime</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/violence" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">violence</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/discrimination" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">discrimination</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/african-americans" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">African Americans</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/central-park-five" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">central park five</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Earl Ofari Hutchinson </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">New America Media; Wikipedia Commons</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Sun, 24 Jul 2016 18:22:52 +0000 tara 7064 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/5919-trump-no-stranger-law-and-order-baiting#comments The Development of the School-to-Prison Pipeline https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/5771-development-school-prison-pipeline <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Sun, 04/24/2016 - 16:12</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1racistcop_1.jpg?itok=WbXub9gg"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1racistcop_1.jpg?itok=WbXub9gg" width="480" height="270" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p>On Tuesday April 20<sup>th</sup>, 1999, events in a small town in Colorado forever altered our national understanding of school violence. That was the day when two young men, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, opened fire in their high school, ultimately killing 12 students and 1 teacher and injuring 21 additional people before killing themselves. The attack was meant to be much larger – explosive devices intended to kill hundreds more were littered throughout the school and inside Klebold and Harris’ abandoned cars. Years later it was reported that the duo hoped to rival the Oklahoma City bombings in scope and scale. As <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/assessment/2004/04/the_depressive_and_the_psychopath.html">reported</a> in <em>Slate</em> by Dave Cullen, author of the book <em>Columbine</em>, “their vision was to create a nightmare so devastating and apocalyptic that the entire world would shudder at their power.”</p> <p> </p> <p>According to Cullen, “Harris and Klebold would have been dismayed that Columbine was dubbed the ‘worst <em>school</em> shooting in American history.’ They set their sights on eclipsing the world's greatest mass murderers…” Although Cullen might be right that Harris and Klebold would be disappointed in what they might have seen as their failure to carry out their full plan, the Columbine massacre had a much larger impact on American culture than this analysis really allows for. The Oklahoma City bombing certainly rattled the country when it happened, but it didn’t really impact our national conversation in any long term way. We wouldn’t allow ourselves to have an honest conversation about domestic terrorism because the perpetrator was a white man and that does not fit into our narrative of who the enemy is.</p> <p> </p> <p>But the Columbine shooting <em>did</em> change the conversation. It made us view our schools as possible warzones, and students as the potential perpetrators. It brought us to where we are today in 2016. There have been countless school shootings – largely committed by white men – yet our response has been to place police officers in inner-city schools in lower-income neighborhoods. The results have been predictable yet incredibly unsettling.</p> <p>This past September, the video of a school resource officer (SRO) in Columbia, South Carolina forcibly removing a 16-year-old female student from her desk and flinging her across the room before arresting her went viral. Officer Ben Fields was ultimately removed from his post but the implications of his actions, and the conversations they have spurred, have continued.</p> <p> </p> <p><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/27/us/south-carolina-school-resource-officers/">According to the National Center for Education Statistics</a>, during the 2013-2014 school year about 43 percent of all US schools – 63 percent of middle schools and 64 percent of high schools - have SROs. Our public school system employs about 46,000 full-time and 36,000 part-time officers across the country. In theory, these officers supervise lunchrooms, coach sports, teach drug and alcohol awareness and, in many situations, become confidants to kids who need an ally at school or don’t have the support they need at home due to myriad different reasons. But, as the incident in South Carolina indications, the existence of SROs in schools is not always positive.</p> <p> </p> <p>For some groups, the presence of police officers leads to a feeling of safety. Following the school shootings that seem to be increasing exponentially over the past nearly two decades since Columbine, it seems to make sense that police officers would be in school to act as a deterrent to crime, decrease response time if a crime is committed, and offer a sense of security and order to students, educators and parents alike.</p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/2racistcop_1.jpg" style="height:417px; width:625px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>The reality, however, can be very different. As we have learned over the past few years with the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland and countless more, having a positive relationship with the police is more a luxury than a given. While white parents oftentimes tell their children to seek out police when they find themselves in a dangerous or scary situation, parents of black and Hispanic children teach their children to exercise caution. Even Bill de Blasio, the current mayor if New York City, chimed in on the issue when a jury failed to indict the white police officer who was involved in the choking death of Staten Island resident Eric Garner, a black man.</p> <p> </p> <p>De Blasio spoke about teaching his son Dante, who is biracial, about how to deal with the police. De Blasio said, “What parents have done for decades who have children of color, especially young men of color, is train them to be very careful when they have ...an encounter with a police officer.” He continued to explain that even something as simple as reaching for a cell phone, keys or a wallet for identification can have tragic results.</p> <p> </p> <p>For many, the presence of SROs in the schools was a way to combat some of these problems, hopefully resulting in a more trust-filled relationship between police officers and young people of color starting at a younger age. But the results in many instances have been the opposite, with community members contending that SROs are actually <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/01/30/are-school-resource-officers-part-of-the-school-to-prison-pipeline-problem">contributing to the school-prison-pipeline</a> by doling out harsh punishments for petty offenses such as tardiness.</p> <p> </p> <p>Much of the problem with police in schools is that, in many instances, their hands are tied. Once a police officer has been called in to handle a problem in the classroom, the damage has essentially been done. Rather than sending a student to the principal when they are misbehaving which has historically been the teacher’s approach, police officers are bound by policy to respond using their role as law enforcement. This means that rather than getting detention or being suspended, many kids are arrested and entered into the criminal justice system – an experience that could lead to difficulties later on in life.</p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/1schoolviolence.jpg" style="height:471px; width:625px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>According to a <a href="http://www.texasappleseed.net/index.php?option=com_docman&amp;task=doc_download&amp;gid=504&amp;Itemid=">Texas Appleseed report</a>, of the 3,500 student arrests in 11 Texas districts in the 2006-2007 school year, only 20 percent of those involved violence or a weapon, and in more of those cases the weapon of choice was a fist. We all had experiences growing up where kids, affected by high stress and raging hormones, got into fist fights in the hallways or the playground. Those fights almost never led to an arrest and, as a result, those involved were able to move through their lives with an unblemished criminal record.</p> <p> </p> <p>But now, with an uptick in rigid zero-tolerance policies, our schools are in some ways becoming a path into the criminal justice system. And <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/06/03/report-schools-should-reduce-use-of-zero-tolerance-discipline-policies">it has been shown</a> that those most likely to be caught up in this cycle are minorities, LGBT and special-needs students.</p> <p> </p> <p>So what is the answer? It doesn’t seem as though school shootings have decreased, especially considering that most of the school shootings seem to occur in middle-to-upper-class white communities, the exact communities that don’t have SROs wandering their hallways. Has the increased presence of police officers in schools led to a decrease in violence or an improved relationship between minority communities and law enforcement?</p> <p> </p> <p>If the data concerning who is being arrested is any indication, it would seem that the police presence is actually worsening an already fraught situation. Perhaps better, more nationally consistent training of SROs is the best approach. Or maybe, just maybe, we should leave it up to school systems to discipline the students, and simply keep law enforcement out of it. These kids deserve a chance to learn in a safe environment, not another way they can end up being incarcerated.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p><strong><em>Rebekah Frank is a contributing writer at</em></strong><strong> Highbrow Magazine. </strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>For Highbrow Magazine®</strong></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/police-officers" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">police officers</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/police-officers-schools" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">police officers in schools</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/police-brutality" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">police brutality</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/crime" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">crime</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/prison" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">prison</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/school-violence" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">school violence</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/students-1" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">students</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Rebekah Frank</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Google Images; Wikipedia Commons</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Sun, 24 Apr 2016 20:12:14 +0000 tara 6861 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/5771-development-school-prison-pipeline#comments Bill Clinton: Rewriting the History of His Crime Bill https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/5745-bill-clinton-rewriting-history-his-crime-bill <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Wed, 04/13/2016 - 20:39</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/3billcllinton.jpg?itok=FG2nu3eR"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/3billcllinton.jpg?itok=FG2nu3eR" width="480" height="270" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p><strong>From <a href="http://www.theroot.com/articles/politics/2016/04/bill_clinton_tries_to_rewrite_history_on_his_crime_bill.html">The Root</a> and republished by our content partner New America Media</strong></p> <p> </p> <p>If Bill Clinton wanted to ignite another round of analysis of the Clinton crime bill (also known as the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act)—the largest crime bill in U.S. history, which he gleefully signed Sept. 13, 1994, in a grand production at the White House Rose Garden—congrats, Bill, you've got it. </p> <p>In response to Black Lives Matter protesters who interrupted his <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/bill-clinton-responds-to-black-lives-matter-protesters/"><strong>stump speech for his wife Thursday</strong></a> in Philadelphia, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRrVI5gHVyo" target="_blank"><strong>Clinton said</strong></a>: "I don't know how you would characterize gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack and sent them out onto the street to murder other African-American children. Maybe you thought they were good citizens—[Hillary] didn't." The former president was answering a protester regarding Hillary Clinton's use of the term "superpredator" in 1996 in support of the multibillion-dollar crime legislation.</p> <p>What Bill Clinton apparently forgot as he defended his wife for using the term is that Hillary Clinton <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/02/25/hillary-clinton-responds-to-activist-who-demanded-apology-for-superpredator-remarks/" target="_blank"><strong>apologized</strong></a> for that in February after a Black Lives Matter protester <a href="http://www.theroot.com/articles/news/2016/02/watch_blm_activist_confronts_hillary_clinton_during_south_carolina_fundraiser.html" target="_blank"><strong>confronted her</strong></a> at a South Carolina fundraiser. But that's not the only way Bill Clinton was out of step in Philadelphia.  </p> <p>"I had money for inner-city kids, for out-of-school activities. We had 110,000 police officers so we could put people on the street, not in these military vehicles, and so the police could look like the people they were policing," he added, then scolded the protesters: "You are defending the people who killed the lives you say matter. Tell the truth."</p> <p>So let's tell the truth. The truth is that the Clinton crime bill was a strategic answer from the Democratic Party to the charge that it was "soft on crime," a charge that had dogged the party since Lee Atwater's famous <a href="http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/the-legacy-the-willie-horton-ad-lives" target="_blank"><strong>Willie Horton ad</strong></a> that crushed the presidential campaign of Democrat Michael Dukakis in 1988. The crime bill was passed by a Democratic-controlled House run by Speaker Tom Foley (D-Wash.) and a Democratic-controlled Senate run by Majority Leader George Mitchell. The Newt Gingrich Republican takeover didn't start until 1995.  </p> <p>In February an <a href="http://www.theroot.com/articles/politics/2016/02/the_clinton_legacy_decimated_black_america_so_why_are_we_still_voting_for.html" target="_blank"><strong>article by Ohio State University professor Michelle Alexander</strong></a> went viral. The author of the book <em>The New Jim Crow</em> detailed the impact of the Clinton crime bill on black communities. "Bill championed the idea of a federal 'three strikes' law in <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/states/docs/sou94.htm"><strong>his 1994 State of the Union address</strong></a> and, months later, signed a $30 billion <a href="http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Violent+Crime+Control+and+Law+Enforcement+Act+of+1994"><strong>crime bill</strong></a> that created dozens of new federal capital crimes, mandated life sentences for some three-time offenders, and authorized more than $16 billion for state prison grants and the expansion of police forces," Alexander pointed out.</p> <p>The Clinton crime bill did add police, just as our revisionist-history 42nd president told the crowd in Philly. But that wasn't about police "looking" like the people they were policing. It led to what we have now and what many in Congress are now trying to roll back: an over-incarceration state that spends more than $80 billion in corrections and affects African Americans far out of proportion. If you put 100,000 more police officers on the street, where do you think these cops are going? The level of disproportion regarding policing of black and brown communities remains staggering, and the data are undeniable.  </p> <p>In New York City alone from 2002 to present, there were over 5 million street stops and interrogations, and "<a href="http://www.nyclu.org/content/stop-and-frisk-data" target="_blank"><strong>blacks and Latino communities continue to be the overwhelming target of these tactics</strong></a>," according to data by the American Civil Liberties Union. </p> <p>The incarceration rate for black men in the U.S. is now worse than it was in South Africa under apartheid. And South Africa is one of the world's top incarcerators, along with China and Russia. But no one is ahead of the world's No. 1 prison state: America. We remain the world's top incarcerator for a reason. And federal crime policy tends to be copied by the states in what is known as a "copycat effect." </p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/3hillary_2.jpg" style="height:428px; width:625px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>State spending on incarceration spiked 300 percent after the Clinton crime bill, which contained over $9 billion for prisons, was passed. We now have more than 2.2 million people behind bars. If that were the population of a U.S. city, it would be <a href="http://mic.com/articles/110920/8-jarring-facts-that-every-american-needs-to-know-about-our-prison-system#.j12VK17fi"><strong>the fourth-largest city in the U.S., after Chicago</strong></a>. Thanks in large part to the 1994 bill, the U.S. now spends more money on incarceration than it does education. You can't put $9 billion into prisons and be shocked about what you get on the other end.</p> <p>To hear Bill Clinton tell it, black leaders begged for his crime bill. As if his primary motivation were that "blacks wanted it." What he leaves out is that though there were some black elected officials who supported the bill, there were also others who fought hard against it. Why? In fear that it would do exactly what it did: spike incarceration and have a disproportionate impact on African Americans. </p> <p>There were 38 members of the Congressional Black Caucus in 1994; <a href="http://clerk.house.gov/evs/1994/roll416.xml"><strong>12 voted against the Clinton crime bill on Aug. 21, 1994.</strong></a> Included in those "no" voters were Reps. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), John Conyers (D-Mich.), John Lewis (D-Ga.), Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.), William Clay Sr. (D-Mo.), Louis Stokes (D-Ohio), Mel Watt (D-N.C.) and Bobby Scott (D-Va.).</p> <p>The crime bill has proved to be bad policy, and several provisions, such as "<a href="https://judiciary.house.gov/press-release/house-judiciary-committee-unveils-bipartisan-sentencing-reform-legislation/" target="_blank"><strong>three strikes you're out</strong></a>" and the ending of Pell Grants to educate prisoners, are now <a href="http://famm.org/sentencing-reform-and-corrections-act-of-2015/" target="_blank"><strong>slowly</strong></a> being <a href="http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-department-education-launches-second-chance-pell-pilot-program-incarcerated-individuals" target="_blank"><strong>repealed</strong></a>.  </p> <p>Bill Clinton knows this. That's why, during an NAACP meeting in July 2015, he admitted it. "I signed a bill that made the problem worse," he said. "And I want to admit it." He said this last year, months after his wife, Hillary, made a speech on criminal-justice reform at Columbia University.  </p> <p>But many believe that the Bill Clinton who defended his crime bill Thursday was a truer reflection of his feelings than the Bill Clinton heard at the NAACP. </p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Author Bio: </strong></p> <p><strong><em>Lauren Victoria Burke is a Washington, D.C.-based political reporter who writes the <a href="http://www.crewof42.com/">Crew of 42</a> blog. She appears regularly on </em>NewsOne Now <em>with Roland Martin on TV One.</em></strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>From <a href="http://www.theroot.com/articles/politics/2016/04/bill_clinton_tries_to_rewrite_history_on_his_crime_bill.html">The Root</a> and republished by our content partner New America Media</strong></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/bill-clinton" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Bill Clinton</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/clinton-crime-bill" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">clinton crime bill</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/bill-clinton-presidency" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">bill clinton presidency</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/african-americans" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">African Americans</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/crime" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">crime</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/police-force" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">police force</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Lauren Victoria Burke </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Google Images</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Thu, 14 Apr 2016 00:39:59 +0000 tara 6825 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/5745-bill-clinton-rewriting-history-his-crime-bill#comments Waco Biker Disaster Again Raises Issues of Racial Double Standard https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/5031-waco-biker-disaster-again-raises-issues-racial-double-standard <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Tue, 05/26/2015 - 13:43</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1bikerbrawl_0.jpg?itok=yesT9dHh"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1bikerbrawl_0.jpg?itok=yesT9dHh" width="480" height="319" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p><strong>From our content partner <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2015/05/waco-biker-mayhem-again-raises-the-fierce-racial-double-standard.php">New America Media</a></strong></p> <p> </p> <p>We’ve seen it so often that it’s now become laughable, pitiable, and disgraceful. But more than anything else it strikes to the heart of a grotesque truth about American hypocrisy. The “it” this time is the blatant and outrageous casual, almost matter of fact, infuriating racial double standard by law enforcement, much of the press and public officials when it’s young black males committing mayhem versus young and not so young white males committing mayhem. It reared its ugly head again in the way that law enforcement handled and much of the media reported on the deadly shootout between two rival white Texas biker gangs.</p> <p> </p> <p>The carnage that left nine dead and scores wounded was, by any way you cut it, a public massacre. It was labeled a “feud,” “a turf battle,” accompanied by a deluge of interviews from self-identified biker gang members painting themselves as just another harmless, social club.</p> <p> </p> <p>Then we saw the now infamous picture of scores of bikers who almost certainly in some way were connected with the mayhem, leisurely sitting on a road siding tweeting, surfing their cells, and yukking it up with each other. And just who did we see sitting beside them? We saw police officers seemingly just as casual; smiling, leisurely and nonchalant as if it was just another day at the office. Or, as if they had just hauled these guys over and detained them for nothing more compelling than for a speeding violation.</p> <p> </p> <p>Suffice it to say, there have been no hysterical screeches branding them thugs, gangsters, animals, and vermin. There have been no indignant and furious calls from the press, citizenry, and elected officials for a swift, harsh, and massive crackdown, sweeps, and toss the book demands at them. The kind that we instantly hear leap from their mouths, drum the airwaves with, and pen angry editorials on when its young blacks on the hot seat.</p> <p> </p> <p>This tired, double-standard script is so well-worn we can mail it in. Young whites tear up streets, overturn cars, and battle police after a championship hockey or basketball victory or loss. It’s simply tagged as boys will be boys, acting out, or, a young white male shoots up a school or theater. And there’s the endless string of psycho babble pronouncements about his troubled childhood, drug and meds addiction and dependence, and psychological traumas.</p> <p> </p> <p>Or, how about, when young whites are popped for drug use? The pipeline for them is not to courts and jails, but to counseling and treatment, therapy, and prayers. Their drug abuse is chalked up to escape, frustration, or restless youthful experimenting. They get heart wringing indulgent sympathy, compassion, and a never-ending soul search for rational explanations, or should I say justification for their criminal, violent and yes, thug behavior.</p> <p> </p> <p>The dual racial standard rests squarely on the pantheon of stereotypes and negative typecasting of young black males that continues to have deadly consequences in the assaults on and the gunning down of unarmed young black males under questionable circumstances. The hope was that President Obama's election buried once and for all negative racial typecasting and the perennial threat racial stereotypes posed to the safety and well-being of black males.</p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/2bikerbrawl_0.jpg" style="height:416px; width:625px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>It did no such thing. Immediately after Obama's election teams of researchers from several major universities found that many of the old stereotypes about poverty and crime and blacks remained just as frozen in time. The study found that much of the public still perceived those most likely to commit crimes are poor, jobless and black. The study did more than affirm that race and poverty and crime were firmly rammed together in the public mind. It also showed that once the stereotype is planted, it's virtually impossible to root out. That's hardly new either.</p> <p> </p> <p>In 2003, Penn State University researchers conducted a landmark study on the tie between crime and public perceptions of who is most likely to commit crime. The study found that many whites are likely to associate pictures of blacks with violent crime. This was no surprise given the relentless media depictions of young blacks as dysfunctional, dope-peddling, gang bangers and drive-by shooters. The Penn State study found that even when blacks didn't commit a specific crime, whites still misidentified the perpetrator as an African-American.</p> <p> </p> <p>Five years later university researchers wanted to see if that stereotype still held sway, even as white voters were near unanimous that race made a difference in whether they would or did vote for Obama. Researchers still found public attitudes on crime and race unchanged. The majority of whites still overwhelmingly fingered blacks as the most likely to commit crimes, even when they didn't commit them.</p> <p> </p> <p>The bulging numbers of blacks in America's jails and prisons seem to reinforce the wrong-headed perception that crime and violence in America invariably comes with a young, black male face. The brutal reality is that Waco won’t change that. It will be the proverbial one day in, one day out news story. And that will be that, that is until the next young black throws a rock or a bottle and then, well we know the script.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong><em>Earl</em> <em>Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour heard weekly on the nationally network broadcast Hutchinson Newsmaker Network.</em></strong></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>From our content partner <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2015/05/waco-biker-mayhem-again-raises-the-fierce-racial-double-standard.php">New America Media</a></strong></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/waco" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">waco</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/biker-murders" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">biker murders</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/biker-gangs" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">biker gangs</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/texas" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Texas</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/racial-discrimination" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">racial discrimination</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/racial-bias" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">racial bias</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/double-standards" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">double standards</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/african-americans" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">African Americans</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/crime" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">crime</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Earl Ofari Hutchinson </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Tue, 26 May 2015 17:43:01 +0000 tara 6035 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/5031-waco-biker-disaster-again-raises-issues-racial-double-standard#comments India’s ‘Kiss of Love’ Campaign Misses the Mark https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/4437-india-s-kiss-love-campaign-misses-mark <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Wed, 11/12/2014 - 14:53</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1kissoflove.jpg?itok=oXemwwQ_"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1kissoflove.jpg?itok=oXemwwQ_" width="480" height="360" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p>From <a href="http://www.firstpost.com/">FirstPost.com</a> and our content partner <a href="http://newamericamedia.org/2014/11/right-issue-wrong-tactic----kiss-of-love-misses-its-mark.php">New America Media</a></p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Ed. Note: A campaign in India has highlighted tensions between progressives advocating for the right to public displays of affection and more conservative activists who say such behavior violates India’s traditional values. The “Kiss of Love” campaign started in the southern state of Kerala and has now spread nationwide, with protestors gathering this past weekend in front of the Delhi headquarters of the right-wing organization RSS. NAM contributor Sandip Roy says the “kiss-in” protest fails to draw attention to the real culprit -- moral policing. </strong></p> <p> </p> <p>Kiss of Love has all the right slogans. My body, my right. The right to love in all its forms. Down with the goondaism of the self-appointed moral police. But it turns full-on PDA into some kind of lodestone of liberation. It takes a serious concern – egregious moral policing — and turns it into a television evening-news-friendly kiss-in.</p> <p> </p> <p>Let’s get one thing crystal clear. Lip locks should not lead to lock ups. It’s 100 percent not okay to have a cane-wielding policeman come up and give you a few hard thwacks or haul you off to jail under Section 294 for some consensual public pappi-love. Even more outrageous is the idea that cops can preemptively arrest you in case you kiss someone and that hypothetical kiss incites some outraged Morcha activist to come beat you up. That you should get arrested, instead of the goon with the flying fists, is simply mindboggling.</p> <p> </p> <p>But read my lips. It’s also okay to be uncomfortable about seeing a couple making out next to you. In a bus or the subway station or just in front of your local Café Coffee Day.</p> <p> </p> <p>The Kiss of Love protests seems to miss that key distinction, and therefore undermine the very cause they espouse.</p> <p> </p> <p>Some of us are moral policemen. Some of us are just a bit fuddy-duddy. But let’s face it, the great majority of us are not given to PDA – no matter what those statues are up to on the temple walls of Khajuraho or Konarak. Most of us don’t want to see a bunch of people making out like nobody’s business in plain sight. At best, we avert our eyes. Or crankily tut-tut and tell them to get a room or at least find a bush. There’s a reason why even the bastion of lasciviousness, Bollywood maintains a peekaboo relationship with the big buss even in the 21st century.</p> <p> </p> <p>Despite all the hype, silver screen kisses are few and far between — and mostly tentatively peckish, which should be a pretty tell-tale sign about our kissing prudishness.</p> <p> </p> <p>So the media counts the lip-locks to measure the success of a protest. Eight, at Jawaharlal Nehru University on Saturday according to the kiss counter for the <em>Times</em> of India. All the attention is on the kiss rather than the travesty of moral policing. (Of course, that a reporter spent his time counting the kisses at a kissing-protest speaks volumes about our comfort level with the act.)</p> <p> </p> <p>The problem is that the protest ought not to be about kissing at all. The original protest in the state of Kerala was sparked by a string of moral policing incidents. A theater artist and her colleague were detained for traveling together at night. A couple was arrested for suspected “immoral activities” on a bench in Alappuzha, especially suspicious because the woman was not wearing anything to indicate she was married. An IT professional in Kochi was beaten up by drunk men for riding pillion on a male colleague’s motorbike. Yes, Jai Hind TV did telecast a story about alleged immoral activity in the parking lot of a café in Kozhikode and that included hugging and kissing. But the kissing was beside the point. The moral police didn’t need lip locks to swoop down with their goons.</p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/2kissoflove.jpg" style="height:349px; width:625px" /></p> <p> </p> <p>Political parties see these battles over public behavior as occasions ripe for muscle flexing – on both sides of the moral policing fence. While the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha vandalizes the café in Kozhikode, the BJP Yuva Morcha protests outside the Star Theater in Kolkata because its manager refused entry to a young woman in a skirt, accompanied by her father, for a show of <em>Happy New Year</em>, incidentally a film where Deepika Padukone pole-dances. Let’s also note that the Jai Hind channel in Kerala is Congress-owned. As long as moral policing is seen as an effective organizing tool, parties will fuel the fire.</p> <p> </p> <p>This means it is all the more imperative to effectively resist the repressers. “To me one of the most important measures of the health and happiness of a society is the freedom accorded to people to love freely, and choose their partners freely (of whatever gender and sexual persuasion),” writes Dilip Simeon. Undoubtedly.</p> <p> </p> <p>It is also true that protest is in part performance. And every protest needs something eye-catching and attention-grabbing. The Pink Chaddi campaign was smart. When the Shri Ram Sena decided to attack women in a Mangalore pub and its head Pramod Muthalik announced that his “activists” would go around with turmeric and mangalsutras to shame courting couples on Valentine's Day, the Pink Chaddi campaign started couriering pink underwear to his office. It was cheeky, funny and made its point without making it seem like a campaign for the right to wear pink chaddis in public.</p> <p> </p> <p>Protesting moral policing should not become about the act of kissing. Just as the SlutWalk is not about walking down Delhi in a bikini or even hot pants. Women can get cat calls in India or pinched in that shared auto even in a perfectly demure all-Bharatiya salwar kameez as opposed to scandalous do-you-think-it’s-Miami shorts. The moral police have no right to decide what a woman should wear but the right to walk down a street and not be harassed should not be confused with the right to wear shorts.</p> <p> </p> <p>But choosing a kiss to battle moral policing runs the risk of looking like some self-indulgent Emraan Hashmi reality show. To the casual observer it looks all about the right to kiss anyone anywhere. That very much misses the wood for the trees. Worse as the cameras zoom in on those puckered lips, and reporters spend their time counting the kisses, we do less than lip service to the real issue of moral policing.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong><em>This story originally appeared on Firstpost.com</em></strong></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/india" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">India</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/kiss-love" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">kiss of love</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/public-displays-affection" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">public displays of affection</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/moral-police" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">moral police</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/crime" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">crime</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/obscenity" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">obscenity</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/indian-law" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">indian law</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/indian-government" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Indian government</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Sandip Roy</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Wikipedia Commons; Google Images</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Wed, 12 Nov 2014 19:53:44 +0000 tara 5415 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/4437-india-s-kiss-love-campaign-misses-mark#comments Crime Does Pay: Global mafias’ $2 trillion bonanza https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/4328-crime-does-pay-global-mafias-trillion-bonanza <div class="field field-name-field-cat field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/news-features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News &amp; Features</a></div></div></div><span class="submitted-by">Submitted by tara on Mon, 09/29/2014 - 14:04</span><div class="field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="og:image rdfs:seeAlso" resource="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1mafias.jpg?itok=10-Hb837"><img typeof="foaf:Image" src="https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/1mafias.jpg?itok=10-Hb837" width="480" height="270" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p> </p> <p>Transnational organized crime generates $2 trillion in revenue per year globally, roughly the size of Britain’s economy, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.</p> <p> </p> <p>Wonder how much money those fake <a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/966058-counterfeit-louis-vuitton-goods-worth-one-billion-yuan-are-seized-in-southern-china/">Luis Vuitton handbags</a> and <a href="http://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/Fake-DVDs-transformed-bottles-mobile-phone-cases/story-22923178-detail/story.html">DVDs of the latest</a> Hollywood hits bring in? At $654 billion annually, counterfeiting and intellectual property piracy tops the global list of most lucrative illicit activities.</p> <p> </p> <p>The <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/09/08/former-world-leaders-calls-for-nations-to-decriminalize-drug-use-and-experiment-with-legalization/">global drug trade</a> comes in second at a not-too-shabby $411 billion; <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2014/09/19/two-arrested-arlington-human-trafficking-case/cemejCvrx7RaKaFke3nvHK/story.html">human trafficking</a> and prostitution next at $240 billion; <a href="http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/uae/crime/over-6-800-arrested-for-financial-crimes-1.1386391">financial crimes</a> fourth at $194 billion; and bringing up the rear of global illicit activities’ biggest hits, <a href="http://bismarcktribune.com/bakken/environmental-crimes-office-now-in-bismarck/article_d18999d4-297c-11e4-ae12-001a4bcf887a.html">environmental crimes</a> such as illegal logging, mining  and waste disposal at $138 billion.</p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Not Your Father’s Mafia</strong></p> <p> </p> <p><a href="http://fortune.com/2014/09/14/biggest-organized-crime-groups-in-the-world/">Today’s criminal networks</a> are nothing like those that <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/origins-of-the-mafia">sprang up first in Italy</a> more than a century ago and later in other parts of the world as Italians brought their knowhow and organizational skills to their adopted countries.</p> <p> </p> <p>In strategy, sophistication, and reach 21<sup>st</sup> century criminal organizations function more like multinational corporations.</p> <p> </p> <p>Up to as late as the 1970s, operating almost entirely domestically, organized criminals simply marked out a territory (the Gambinos, New York City, for example) extorting local businesses and running illicit markets in gambling, drugs, and prostitution.</p> <p> </p> <p>Today, criminal organizations, such as the Mexican drug cartels, <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/mexican-drug-cartels-expand-reach-peru-n198941">operate across borders</a> with much of their businesses decentralized and run by professional associates rather than family members.</p> <p> </p> <p>With the globalization of trade and consumer demand along with advances in communications and transportation, it was a natural progression for organized criminal groups to <a href="http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/137529/moises-naim/mafia-states">move from national to transnational operations.</a></p> <p> </p> <p>In addition, the transition of much of what we do to the Internet and mobile phones has created a wealth of opportunities to expand their activities.</p> <p> </p> <p>For example, the market in illegally obtained financial and personal information and other cyber crimes is the fastest growing segment of organized crime. <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/riskandcompliance/2014/09/15/fbi-to-companies-we-need-your-help-on-cybercrime/">The cost of cyber crime</a> is larger than the combined cost of trafficking in cocaine and heroin, according to Interpol and will continue to grow without a concerted coordinated global effort to combat it.</p> <p> </p> <p>Transnational crime touches all four corners of the world and just about every large industry either directly or indirectly.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Mining for Opportunities in Africa</strong></p> <p> </p> <p>In addition to well-documented illegal trade in minerals, exotic animals, timber, human beings, and arms, Africa has become the main transit point for tens-of-billions of dollars worth of <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/21/us-westafrica-drugs-idUSKBN0GL00Z20140821">drugs traveling from Latin America</a> to Europe having grown by a factor of four in recent years. <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21583671-north-african-governments-struggle-stem-illegal-flow-arms-and-drugs-boom">An illegal arms trade</a> between Eastern Europe and the region’s various insurgent and terrorist groups has proven to be particularly lucrative for criminal groups based in the two continents as well.</p> <p> </p> <p><a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/09/03/uk-ivorycoast-piracy-idUKKBN0GY0ZS20140903">Piracy</a>, which gained a measure of fame with Tom Hank’s Oscar-nominated film, <em>Captain Phillips</em>, peaked in 2012, remains relatively small (around $1 billion annually) compared to more lucrative trade in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/20/world/middleeast/fleeing-gaza-only-to-face-treachery-and-disaster-at-sea-.html?ref=middleeast">human beings</a>, minerals, and drugs.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Asia</strong><strong> on the Rise</strong></p> <p> </p> <p>In addition to leading the world in economic growth over the past decade, Asia has taken global crime’s center stage.</p> <p> </p> <p>According to the U.N., 60 percent of <a href="http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/963971-human-trafficking-addressed-in-europe-asia-dialogue-2/">human trafficking happens in Asia</a>. China is the main source of <a href="http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2014/august/counterfeit-goods-smuggling-ring-dismantled/counterfeit-goods-smuggling-ring-dismantled">counterfeit goods</a>. India is the leading producer of counterfeit medicines. Iran and Afghanistan produce nearly three-quarters of the world’s opium.  And the harvesting of human organs across the region supports much of the world’s demand, the vast majority of it in Europe and the U.S.</p> <p> </p> <p>China is the third largest market for criminal gangs generating $260 billion in revenue annually, but is rising quickly given the country’s seemingly insatiable need to grow economically whether by legitimate or illegitimate means.</p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/mediummoney.jpg" style="height:335px; width:600px" /></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Demand-Driven Europe </strong></p> <p> </p> <p>More than $500 billion in drugs, <a href="https://uk.news.yahoo.com/mediterranean-migrants-human-trafficking-gang-took-organs-payment-163015074.html#0Zdwd1F">humans trafficked for sex</a>, counterfeit goods, and illegally sourced minerals and timber teem into Europe through its porous southern tier annually, making it the second largest market for illegal goods and services globally after the U.S.</p> <p> </p> <p>The lack of a coordinated effort by the European Union to combat transnational organized crime has given old criminal networks like the Italian mafia a second life and allowed new ones like the Russian and Serbian mobs to flourish. </p> <p> </p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Latin America</strong><strong>: Crime and No Punishment</strong></p> <p> </p> <p>Despite the U.S.’ and local governments’ best efforts, organized criminal groups continue to grow unabated, threatening the stability of governments and the security of citizens throughout the region.</p> <p> </p> <p><a href="http://www.drugpolicy.org/drug-trafficking-latin-america">El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras</a> have among the world’s highest crime rates in the world (outside South Africa) largely due to drug cartels’ power to intimidate governments and citizens alike.</p> <p> </p> <p>Mexico’s cartels earn more money (an estimated $28-40 billion a year) from selling drugs than Mexico earns from oil exports.  Human smuggling, primarily across the border to the U.S., has become a major source of revenue for the cartels as well.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor and Your Criminals Yearning to Earn Billions</strong></p> <p> </p> <p>The U.S.’s appetite for illegal drugs, cheap labor, <a href="http://www.sun-sentinel.com/fl-counterfeit-credit-card-fraud-20140919,0,3891958.story">quick money</a>, and fake designer goods has made it the biggest market for global criminals, generating more than $620 billion annually for <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-29155268">Mexican drug cartels</a>, Russian cyber-criminals, Nigerian scam artists, and Chinese factory owners.</p> <p> </p> <p>Criminal gangs tied to the drug trade swelled to an estimated 1 million members in recent years, according to the FBI. The gangs keep cocaine, meth and marijuana flowing from south to north, keep wholesale and street-level dealers in line, and make sure the cartels’ ill-gotten gains are laundered and sent south.</p> <p> </p> <p>Terrorists, including those who threaten the U.S., increasing are turning to transnational organized criminals to generate funding and acquire logistical support and knowhow to carry out violent acts, according the National Security Council.</p> <p> </p> <p>The Justice Department reports that half of the 63 international drug-trafficking organizations had significant relationships with terrorist groups, using them to transport drugs, launder money, and provide muscle.</p> <p> </p> <p>Terrorists groups are also engaged in kidnapping for ransom, weapons trafficking, and human smuggling to raise money for their operations.</p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/2mafias.jpg" style="height:380px; width:625px" /></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>The Kingpins of the Criminal World</strong></p> <p> </p> <p>There are hundreds, if not thousands, of criminal groups spread across the globe.  The smaller ones almost all operate solely on their home turfs.  Many of the larger ones, particularly those engaged in more sophisticated and capital intensive activities such as drug smuggling, counterfeiting, human trafficking, and illegal trade in commodities such as oil and timber, operate across borders.  The transnational criminal organizations are assisted by bankers, accountants, and lawyers <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/opinion/sunday/where-the-mob-keeps-its-money.html?pagewanted=all&amp;_r=0">laundering and investing their ill-gotten gains</a>.</p> <p> </p> <p>Of the biggest and most sophisticated global criminal groups, five stand out:  </p> <p> </p> <p><strong>The Italian Mafia</strong></p> <p> </p> <p>Italian criminal organizations have long been the model for other criminal groups. The main groups are the Sicilian Mafia, or “Cosa Nostra,” the Neapolitan Camorra, and the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta.  The Cosa Nostra is considered the largest and most important of the three. The Sicilian Mafia has moved much of its criminal activities from a rural focus to a focus on <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2011/01/modern_mafiosi.html">industrial and business opportunities</a> and from a regional and national network to an international one.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>The Russian Mafiya</strong></p> <p> </p> <p>Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian Mafiya has emerged to become among the largest and the world’s most powerful organized crime networks engaging in a wide range of illicit activities including <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/20/business/ex-employees-say-home-depot-left-data-vulnerable.html?hp&amp;action=click&amp;pgtype=Homepage&amp;version=LedeSum&amp;module=first-column-region&amp;region=top-news&amp;WT.nav=top-news&amp;_r=0">cybercrime.</a>  A gray area between legal and criminal business activity in Russia has allowed the Mafiya to penetrate most areas of the Russian economy.  Many have ties to the government and the most powerful and sophisticated operate internationally, including the Odessa and Chechen mobs, which have set up shop in New York and New Jersey.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>The Asian Triads</strong></p> <p> </p> <p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triad_(underground_society)">The Asian Triads</a> are based primarily in Hong Kong, but are also active in Taiwan and Mainland China. There are more than 160,000 Triad members in Hong Kong belonging to approximately 50 different groups. The Triads have extensive overseas networks, including the United States where they have close ties with youth gangs that exist in many Chinese communities.  The Triads’ main businesses are trading in counterfeit goods and importation of heroin from Southeast Asia to the U.S.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>The Nigerian Criminal Enterprises</strong></p> <p> </p> <p><a href="http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/organizedcrime/african">The Nigerians</a> are relatively new to the global criminal scene.  With political corruption rampant and limited economic opportunity, many educated Nigerians turned to criminal activities to make money.  The Nigerians have large drug-trafficking operations focused on importing heroin into the United States.  They also engage in fraud and extortion, including credit card fraud.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>The Colombian and Mexican Cartels</strong></p> <p> </p> <p>Unlike other organized crime groups that tend to be involved in a range of illegal activities, the <a href="http://www.insightcrime.org/news-analysis/20-years-after-pablo-the-evolution-of-colombias-drug-trade">Colombian</a>s and Mexicans focus their efforts almost exclusively on the drug business. The cartels have merged corporate and criminal activities developing an industry that is based on management principles that include specialization, decentralization, and division of labor.</p> <p> </p> <p>The main drug cartels, centered in Cali and Medellin, control large production and distribution network with vast agricultural enterprises dispersed throughout the Andes.</p> <p> </p> <p><a href="http://www.latimes.com/world/drug-war/">Mexican organized crime</a> groups’ main advantage is their easy access to the world’s largest market for illegal drugs, the United States.  Approximately three-quarters of South American cocaine and 80 percent of foreign-grown marijuana enters the U.S. through Mexico and is handled by the country’s cartels. The Mexican cartels also produce 30 percent of the heroine consumed in the U.S. and increasingly dominate the manufacturing, sale, and distribution of meth, ecstasy, and illegal steroids.</p> <p> </p> <p><br /> <img alt="" src="/sites/default/files/3mafias.jpg" style="height:351px; width:625px" /></p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Author Bio:</strong></p> <p><strong><em>Mark Goebel is a contributing writer at</em> Highbrow Magazine.</strong></p> </div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/crime" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">crime</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/financial-crime" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">financial crime</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/mafia" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">mafia</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/cosa-nostra" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">cosa nostra</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/counterfeit-goods" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">counterfeit goods</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/copyright-infringement" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">copyright infringement</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/fake-louis-vuitton" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">fake louis vuitton</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/drug-trafficking" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">drug trafficking</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/drugs" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">drugs</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/selling-drugs" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">selling drugs</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/human-trafficking" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">human trafficking</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/prostituiton" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">prostituiton</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-text field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Mark Goebel</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-pop field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Popular:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">not popular</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-photographer field-type-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Photographer:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Google Images; Wikipedia Commons</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-bot field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Bottom Slider:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Out Slider</div></div></div> Mon, 29 Sep 2014 18:04:35 +0000 tara 5243 at https://www.highbrowmagazine.com https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/4328-crime-does-pay-global-mafias-trillion-bonanza#comments