I drove down Vine Street yesterday and I finally learned what it’s like to be in a police state. In a two block radius I saw about 8 cops, 1 detective, and one undercover with a young black man in a full nelson.

Today the Cincinnati Enquirer reports that Mayor Mallory took an “official” walk through one of Cincinnati’s most notorious neighborhoods, Over-the-Rhine.

A string of shootings in the neighborhood has brought an extreme police presence and caught the eye of politicians including our mayor.

I understand that a lot of people don’t feel safe in OTR and the entertainment district struggles from time to time, but what is the vision for the neighborhood? After all the criminals are rounded up and locked away, what is the city pushing for OTR to become?

Peace activist Berta Lambert, who is quoted in the Enquirer article and pictured with the “NO YUPPIE-VILLE IN OTR” sign, is justified to question plans for condominiums and lofts that are going to sell for $200,000—well out of the price range for most of OTR’s current residents.

Facing this criticism in front of the flashes of the media cameras, Mayor Mallory assured him that people will not be displaced, but how does he figure? Is the plan to renovate all the buildings, which are structurally magnificent, and give them back to the lower income individuals and families that currently live in them at no extra charge? If not, I don’t see how Mallory can live up to his promise of not displacing members of the community.

I try to sympathize with the creative class movement. I understand the desire to walk through a “vibrant” community filled with art galleries, bright lights, theatre, and exciting night life. This type of atmosphere can attract young talent, gays (which creative class proponents seem to think are a hot commodity), or empty nesters, and many think this is the solution for our city.

As Cincinnatians we need to ask ourselves how many lives we want to ruin to accomplish these goals. How many people do you want to throw in jail for possession of marijuana because some rich guy with a form fitting t-shirt on wants a nice “urban” condo?

I’m a proponent of responsible development, but throwing 700 people in jail in the small window of a few weeks is anything but. It’s neither economically feasible nor compassionate (whichever side of the brain you think with). It is unethical to make potential new residents feel safe by taking away the safety and consistency of the current residents.

Socializer!

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1. Yeah, Right says:
   27 Apr 2006  at  07:00 pm | #

   Andrew:

   If OTR was people doing nothing but smoking pot, there would be no weekly murder or other violence, regardless of what some rich (white?)guy in a form fitting t-shit wants (rich gay guy?). 

   I read this article too in the Enquirer, and what I noticed in your coverage what your failure capture Berta’s anti-white quote with regards to the new, 200k condos:“Nobody in our community can afford that. What it will end up being is mostly white folks,” Lambert said.”

   What if a rich, white, gay guy said “OTR is mostly black folks” with the underlying message being that it is bad?  I think N8’s (and Jason’s)blog would be buringup with rants about racist whites. Even more than usual. 

   Bottom line, I don’t like the pot law either.  It is absurd.  But OTR has a lot more problems than pot smokers and we all know it.

   No one may want to admit it, but these rich (white, gay, whatever) people may just save the neighborhood.

2. Andrew Warner says:
   27 Apr 2006  at  07:06 pm | #

   Yeah, right.

   I left color and sexuality out of this post because it is irrelevant to what I was saying—other then the brief explanation of the CC. No reason for you to add it in.

   What the challenge is (for all of us), is to figure out what “saving the neighborhood” means. People getting pushed out of their own neighborhood would not say it is being saved.

   I would agree that violent crime needs to be eliminated, and yes violent crime is sometimes associated with drugs. But not all drug users are violent. Thus, to lock people up because they are doing drugs and the cops (and city council) presume them to be violent is immoral and faulty logic.

3. JoeRo says:
   27 Apr 2006  at  07:17 pm | #

   Um, last I checked, doing drugs was illegal. Don’t wanna get locked up? Get help for your addiction and get off drugs. And beyond that, I don’t see any good reason for someone who’s struggling to make ends meet to be buying a wasteful and unnecessary commodity in the first place.

4. anon says:
   27 Apr 2006  at  07:20 pm | #

   What is the alternative, not fixing up the buildings and concentrating the poor in just a few sections of town.

   All neighborhoods need commerce and poor people need role models.  OTR used to have 50k residents.  I think their is room for some middle class people.  I oppose segregation.

5. Mary Jane says:
   27 Apr 2006  at  07:36 pm | #

   JoeRo, It costs almost $30,000 a year to keep someone in jail, it’d be cheaper to send them to college. Jay walking is illegal, but that doesn’t mean we’re dumb enough to lock people up for it. Pot smokers are non-violent and this new law locks them up, takes away student loans and gives them a permanent record. There’s no rehabilitation in jail, in fact it’s quite the opposite. People are dehumanized, often assualted and they learn how to become good criminals out of necessity.

   The only reason we do this as a society is it has become big business and politicians can pretend to be tough on crime.

6. JoeRo says:
   27 Apr 2006  at  07:52 pm | #

   Sorry. Just to be clear, I’m not talking about pot or booze. I’m talking about hard drugs, which really really need to be cleared out of any neighbhorhood—be it Avondale or OTR.

   And I think Andrew’s really responding to a vociferous minority. Many residents and business owners are thrilled with the crime crackdown in OTR.

   “It is unethical to make potential new residents feel safe by taking away the safety and consistency of the current residents.”

   I can’t say I follow that statement at all. Are the current residents safer without a crime crackdown? Should we maintain the status-quo crime haven so that they have “consistency”? I think not.

7. Andrew Warner says:
   27 Apr 2006  at  08:04 pm | #

   Do you think all the residents of OTR feel safe while a platoon of people with guns stand on every corner?

   Families need consistency. Famlies don’t need family members locked in prison for minding their own business or socializing on the street—even if they have a little bit of pot.

8. Andrew Warner says:
   27 Apr 2006  at  08:11 pm | #

   not stand, “standing.”

9. Andrew Warner says:
   27 Apr 2006  at  08:40 pm | #

   And yes, that correction was unnecessary.

10. Peter Deane says:
    27 Apr 2006  at  08:40 pm | #

    Over-the-Rhine weather you would like to admit it or not has become a revolving door of violence and poverty.  When you have buildings that are infested with rats and garbage and crap of all kind, when you have violence day after day after day after day,  when you have no fathers in the homes, and it is a cycle that repeats itself over and over… and there is no ownership in an entire neighborhood and this neighborhood begins to effect everyone and help begins to cease to flow into it because of fear and no one seems to feel even an inkling of safety… all becomes lost… and all has become lost in OTR.

    Is the answer to this Gentrification?  I say it must work both ways.  The people that currently live down there have been trapped into an area where the basic social structure of decency has all but disappeared.  The criminal element has firm control over all life there.  The police presence has now helped (How many people shot in OTR in the last two weeks?).  The people must be allowed back and if they can not survive because of a police presence is that to be the fault of every other citizen that lives in the Hamilton County/Cincinnati area.  The neighborhood of OTR had reached a point of no return… in another twenty years if the neighborhood remains poverty ridden; I believe you will have to go block by block mowing down the buildings.  People are at there wits end, both black and white, and the way to figure out the problems that were ongoing and continuing was not top keep it all at the status quo.

    We have a total culture breakdown going on right before us.  Here we are looking at giving few rich stadium owners 700 million dollars of our money… play reverse gentrification with them.  Don’t give them a dime.  Fix up Over-the-Rhine.  That area belongs to many and many can take ownership in it.  The way it is now keeps further money, growth, visitors, businesses, and a true mix of all the races, which are usually middle class from happening. The center of the city needs to be safe and open.  What we have currently going on is not working and is harming many for years to come.  But I must add that in fixing up Over-the-Rhine high minority inclusion must be the high rule. And I’m not talking about some black business owner here and there… I’m talking minority inclusion in the trades that will begin to fix OTR.

    We have allowed ourselves to become co-conspirators by allowing OTR to totally collapse.  It has done nothing for the betterment of Cincinnati as a whole.  Look at who has become the final voice… some guy who considers himself a man of peace that walks around with a sign around his neck saying no yuppieville. This isn’t about making OTR yuppieville, this is about saving our city, this is about revitalizing each and every one of us.  This is about a young mother sitting and watching her children play in a park,  a grandmother waiting at a bus stop, a man talking about knothole baseball on the telephone,  a fourteen year old walking home after saying goodbye to his girlfriend,  a man that is standing holding his son, a girl going to a teen dance… this is about us… and all of us have let it go and the innocent are winding up on the obituary pages.  Give me Yuppieville, police parole officers or heavy police presence in the neighborhoods where crime is on the rise, and a huge central park at the fraction of the cost of 700 million any day.

    Can you imagine what can be done if we only gave 100 million to get the banks done?  Boy that 600 extra million can sure be used to the betterment if maybe we allowed a couple trade schools to be built and all the while refurbish OTR.  And we wonder why people are fleeing in droves and Hamilton County has became the top county on population depletion in America!!!!! Yuppieville? That guy even isn’t close to dreaming reality for everyone in the Cincinnati/Hamilton County area.  Not even close and he can take his sign to other areas of Hamilton County and let him wear… I want this place to look like OTR.  Let him start in Springfield or Sycamore Township and see the reaction he gets.

    The challenge for everyone is the betterment of this community as a whole.  We have given to much to the rich and abandoned our own common sense and reasoning. Our greatest challenge is for us to begin to save all that is lost and to take back what belongs to the greatest good of the furture of all our children in Hamilton County/ Cincinnati… both black and white and in between… we must come to realize that we are all in the same boat and that grandmother waiting for a bus or that mother watching her child play while playing cards in a park belong to everyone.

    And Mr. Castillini, and Mr. Heimlich, and Mr. DeWine, and Mr. Portune, and Mr. Bronson, and Mr. Roberts, and Mr. Lindner,  and Mr. Bortz, and Coach Marvin Lewis, and Mr. Weiland, and Mr. Mallory, and Mr. Deters, and Mr. Brown can stick this note in their pockets and read it before they ask for such heavy funding for a project that will not help this community as a whole.

    Build a Park at a fraction of the cost.  Use the rest to truly save this city.  A lot of money to go around… a lot of owners to be found in OTR. Why give it all to those that allready have gotten so much?  How much did we give the stadiums to them?  I heard the cost was over a hundred million… some call that a billion.  No More… that’s our challenge… no more!

11. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) says:
    27 Apr 2006  at  08:46 pm | #

    I live in Pendleton, which is the Indian Hill of OTR.
    I’ve known Berta Lambert for years.  He makes great signs, and I’ve worn a variety of them at different gatherings.  His and my favorite is “Iraq-nam.”

    First we put a screeching halt to the war on drugs.
    Forget about pot laws.  That is a distraction from what needs to be done.
    The harm is caused by the war on drugs, not the scariest drug you care to become hysterical about.
    Unless we stop the war on drugs, Berta need not worry about yuppiefication, because the violence will only get worse.
    If you are beginning to understand why the war on terror is creating terrorists faster than we can kill them… think locally for a second, instead of globally.

12. Peter Deane says:
    27 Apr 2006  at  09:01 pm | #

    Amen to that David.  I agree with you.  Prohibition is a major factor in the way things are like they are.

13. JoeRo says:
    27 Apr 2006  at  09:58 pm | #

    Consistency isn’t a good thing unto itself, Andrew. My great grandfather was a consistent alcoholic his entire life, and that was nothing but damaging to my grandmother. It would’ve been better for her had he been removed from the picture altogether. So your argument about “consistency” in family life is quite pointless.

    What these kids really need are good role models who will help them with their homework, kick their asses when they get into trouble and play ball with them on the weekends. My friend works for an orphanage for behaviorally challenged kids. Most of their poor behavior stems from a lack of positive role models—either their parents were too willing to be their friend instead of their parent, or they were absentee parents altogther because they were too busy “minding their own business or socializing on the street.”

    Additionally, I have little sympathy for people found guilty of marijuana possession after the new law was passed. If I knew jaywalking might send me to jail, you bet your ass I’d stop jaywalking—whether I agreed with the law or not. The consequences don’t make the action worthwhile.

    That said, I don’t think you’re going to see a lot of folks incarcerated for simple marijuana possession. The intent of the law was to allow officers to perform pat-downs so that they could find unlicensed weapons or harder drugs, and judges know that. As Andrew knows, I lived in New Orleans for a few years, where the marijuana penalties are even stiffer than they are in Ohio. I had a few friends who got caught—both black and white—and the sentences ranged from community service and probation to drug treatment classes. But never were any of them incarcerated. The justice system in any major city is just too overloaded to deal with the appeals process on such a case were someone to be sentenced to jail.

    I’m also a little dumbfounded at your characterization of OTR as a “police state.” Have you ever been to the airport in Rome, Andrew? There are lines of guards with AK-47s pointed at you. And I never felt unsafe there, because I never broke the law. Plus, a police state would seem to indicate to me something on par with Nazi Germany, not increased enforcement in a crime-ridden neighborhood.

14. Andrew Warner says:
    27 Apr 2006  at  10:10 pm | #

    Joe,
    What if police are enforcing unjust laws? You may not consider the marijuana law unjust, but let’s say tomorrow they passed a law saying blacks couldn’t drink in white drinking fountains. Would you still support the presence of cops with AK-47’s stationed by the drinking fountain?

    It seems mine and your disagreement is centered around whether passing a BS law about marijuana to target poor blacks, enabling what I would call unjust searches, is just or unjust. Just because something is passed by a group of corrupt politicians who don’t listen to the people who elect them, does not mean it deserves obedience.

15. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) says:
    27 Apr 2006  at  10:17 pm | #

    JoeRo,
    Don’t worry.  We can’t intervene here, but you need it.  You are exhibiting your grandfather’s behavior by being addicted to the war on drugs and, generally abiding by what “the man” says.
    Sad.
    You are tormented by the compulsion to pull laws out your ass.
    The safest place to cross the road is in the middle of the block… jaywalking schmaywalking.
    As one who has been walking to work downtown for years, trust me.
    Other than the above, I’m sure you are a sterling individual… and cute besides!

16. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) says:
    27 Apr 2006  at  10:34 pm | #

    At one point there were 200,000 people living in OTR.  Currently, I think there are around 15,000.  There is enough vacant properties to allow for more market rate housing without displacement.  With enough resources and a good plan the number of affordable housing units could be increased, not decreased.  And yes, I realize that “enough resources” and “a good plan” are easier said than done.

17. Yeah, Right says:
    27 Apr 2006  at  10:43 pm | #

    JoRo has a point, Andrew.  We must obey laws.  I am a civil libertarian and find many of our laws intolerable and ridiculous.  But I follow them.  As should others.

    If you find that a law is unjust - take it through the court system. 

    OTR cannot survive as-is.  While I, too, would be a little apprehensive about seeing a massive police presence at first; I would welcome it as a resident in the most dangerous neighborhood in this city.

18. Andrew Warner says:
    27 Apr 2006  at  10:53 pm | #

    Yeah, Right,

    Now what is the way to take a law through the court system? Breaking it.

    Changing unjust laws requires the breaking of them due to the fact that one needs legal standing in our court system. Think of the Scopes monkey trial. The law was intentionally broken, the arrest was planned, etc.

    Criminal laws need to go through the court of appeals to be ruled unjust and thus overturned. Sometimes that doesn’t even work. Then what? Suffer under a totalitarian dictatorship because they write the laws and that’s what they told you to do?

    As a self-proclaimed libertarian I would expect you to have a more “healthy distrust” of the government and laws.

19. Andrew Warner says:
    27 Apr 2006  at  10:59 pm | #

    Athena,
    You’re probably right.

    However, knowing our politicians, something like that wouldn’t happen because your idea seems aimed towards the common good, not the good of political contributors.

    When 3CDC pays off politicians to develop parts of our city, 3CDC doesn’t do it out of the kindess of their heart, they do it so the involved parties can make a profit. Once they get OTR the way they want it (filled with YP’s and rich people), property values are going to shoot through the roof. When this happens do you think they will want to miss out on the profit and provide low-income housing? Hell no, the people who use low incoming housing can’t pay back the politicians come election time with anything other than votes, and they hardly even count those any more.

20. Yeah, Right says:
    27 Apr 2006  at  11:04 pm | #

    Are you volunteering your civil disobediance services?  Didn’t think so.  And I wouldn’t either. Believing in liberty doesn’t mean that I don’t have a healthy distrust for government.  It also doesn’t mean I would shoo away police if I were truly in need.  It’s all about balance, Andrew. 

    Note to pot heads:  don’t want the police in your business?  Leave the weed at home.

21. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) says:
    27 Apr 2006  at  11:09 pm | #

    Yeah,Right,
    Can you give us an example of where a massive police presence led to buttercups and roses, love and lollipops?  A goofy smile on Berta Lambert’s kisser?

    The only thing a massive police presence ever led to was an even more massive police presence.
    Then all hell broke loose.

22. JoeRo says:
    27 Apr 2006  at  11:19 pm | #

    As my example above illustrated, there’s little to no crime at the airport in Rome, and there’s a heavy police prescence there—heavier than I think most Americans have seen. You’re trying to make an argument for a consequence-free drug haven, David, and I’m just not going to buy into that kind of crap. The cops have had little prescence in OTR for the past few years, and that’s what gotten us where we are today.

    And Andrew—civil disobedience is fine, but as a last resort. However, there’s been little effort to put this issue on the ballot, so the civil disobedience of which you speak is nothing but a consequence of laziness.

    Further, Andrew, I think you deeply underestimate the dynamic of a city and its neighborhoods. If the poor are entirely forced out of OTR, where will they go? Westwood? Avondale? Clifton? These neighborhoods have active civic groups that will scream and lobby just as loudly as 3CDC if they start to become the next OTR. I’d say what intelligent civic leaders are really seeking is a balance—not an entirely impoverished neighborhood here and an entirely wealthy neighborhood there, but a little of each everywhere. That’s what is sustainable and healthy for a city.

23. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) says:
    27 Apr 2006  at  11:24 pm | #

    I drove down Vine Street yesterday and I finally learned what it’s like to be in a police state.

    Andrew, trying going to Coney Island New York on 4th of July.  The police presence on each & every corner along with walking in the sea of people makes OTR seem like a usual patrol beat.

    And JoeRo is correct about the AK47s in Italy & other parts of Europe. They are everywhere! I have never felt unsafe or unprotected.  It’s a bit startling to see the artillery & the hungry dogs, but if you are minding your affairs & not breaking laws, it’s a nice feeling to have some piece of mind.

    If Lambert doesn’t want white folks moving into OTR to live, work & make a difference, OK.  I’ll find somewhere else.  Picture white people saying that about people of other colors! Whee! The fight would be on. Lambert can stick it up his nose.

24. JoeRo says:
    27 Apr 2006  at  11:31 pm | #

    Yeah, exactly, sockeye. Imagine if I carried around a sandwich board that said, “No Poor Blacks In Westwood”—Think how people would react! Yet somehow it’s OK to discriminate against rich white people?

25. Andrew Warner says:
    27 Apr 2006  at  11:35 pm | #

    Joe,
    Now you are making it seem as if I am arguing that I want poverty concentrated in one area, which I never said.

    If you want to offer a low income individual an apartment in Clifton for the same price they are paying in OTR, and the person accepts sed offer, then you are making progress towards “balance.”

    There are just ways to achieve balance, and unjust ways to achieve the same goal. Sending people to prison for ridiculous laws, kicking them out of their homes using eminent domain; those are all dehumanizing methods of achieving a reasonable goal of economic balance. Remember you are dealing with human beings.

    Yeah, Right
    So you’re not a civil libertarian then? The very essence of that political philosophy is the trust in the individual to make personal choices for his or her self, especially in regards to issues such as drug use. Your statements about leaving drugs at home, and supporting the police in patting people down for their personal choice to use drugs, are in complete contradiction to the heart of the ideology in which you claim to subscribe.

26. JoeRo says:
    27 Apr 2006  at  11:51 pm | #

    Andrew—I only meant to suggest that people like Lambert seem to want to keep poverty concentrated in OTR by trying to keep wealthy white people out. Yet, despite promises from Mallory and others, Lambert et al. insist that poor people will be forced out and that it will become a “Yuppy-ville.” So what do they really want? No progress at all?

    And what homes have been claimed by eminent domain? I thought the state had put a moratorium on the use of eminent domain to claim blighted property for private development…right?

    On the issue of the marijuana law, I think we’ll have to agree to disagree—and agree at the same time. I see it as a tool to combat open-air drug markets that peddle more harmful and dangerous substances—crack, heroine and cocaine. You seem to see it as an economic stimulus tool. And really, it’s both. I’d hope they’d utilize the law against any neighborhood that has pervasive pot-smokers hanging out on the sidewalks, even if that neighborhood were Hyde Park. Such activity lowers the property value anywhere and is frequently (but not always) correlational to other criminal activity.

27. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) says:
    28 Apr 2006  at  12:21 am | #

    What is the justification for The Banks?  There is none!

    What is the justification of renovating the OTR? There is none!

    The OTR is the result of what people needed a hundred years ago; today those conditions don’t exist. The OTR has been modified over and over to try to meet the needs of it’s inhabitants. It is time to quit trying to squeeze more life out of it. It is like an old car that has seen its best years and can only be sold to someone who can’t afford anything better but still needs transportation. And when the poor can no longer keep it running, it goes to the scrap heap. The building in the OTR were never built to last forever. Why is it that you all don’t protest the razing of school buildings, which were built to higher standards, while you all want to save these worn out buildings. You will never have the neighborhoods that you seem to value. Saving the buildings of the OTR is an exercize of nostalgia for something that most of you have never seen.

    The neighborhoods that you dream of are not made up of real estate alone; they require people and a reason for being. You can’t just put bodies in the area and expect to duplicate what was never there in the first place. It is like a woman hell bent on breast feeding a baby because it sounds natural or her husband thinks it is neat while ignoring the fact that bottle-fed babies do much better.

    Doesn’t anyone besides Andrew have the intelligence to analyse more deeper the situation in the OTR? Few of you do nothing but plagiarize the popular knee-jerk symptoms as if any one of them could solve the complex issues that exist in the OTR. None of you seem interested in the poor people that live there except to tell them how they should live as if you are such great models. Until wealth disparity is dealt with, there will never be a solution.

28. funnelcake says:
    28 Apr 2006  at  03:02 am | #

    “It is like a woman hell bent on breast feeding a baby because it sounds natural or her husband thinks it is neat while ignoring the fact that bottle-fed babies do much better.” -dieterschmied

    Umm…bullshit.

    I’ll agree with you to the point that it is the mother’s choice (it is her body), and their may be circumstances where if the mother is on medications or drugs that forumula might be a better option. 

    But for an otherwise healthy female, breast feeding is better for the child: http://kidshealth.org/parent/growth/feeding/breast_bottle_feeding.html

    If your reasons for not breast feeding fall into the catagory of “breasts are naughty,” “how can a woman whip out such foul things in a McDonalds to feed her child” then get over it and don’t try to pass off this forumla is better.

29. Jimmy Joe Meeker says:
    28 Apr 2006  at  04:31 am | #

    Hey dieterschmied and Andrew,

    FUCK THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN OTR.

    We taxpayers have every bit as mush right to live, work and play in OTR as do the non-taxpayers that currently infest the neighborhood. Do you really favour continuing to coral the poor into the concentration camp that OTR has become? Other cities such as Denver have introduced programs which move the section 8 bunch into innovative housing ownership programs. But apparently you would rather have the status quo and keep the poor in the hellhole that is OTR.

    Develop OTR at full speed! We cannot let a couple of thousand people-who live where 50,00 once lived-to dictate the development of this city. Gentrification can be a force for good sometimes, like when it pushes the baggy pants, gun toting, johnston holding yoofs out of OTR once and for good!

30. Jimmy Joe Meeker says:
    28 Apr 2006  at  04:37 am | #

    And yes, I mean the BLACK drug dealers that we see every night on the news shooting at/getting shot/shooting someone else. Most of these yoofs don’t even live in OTR, they come there to deal.

    Push them out once and for all. Or, in the alternative, Andrew, dieterschmied and others you come down and live with these animals for a few weeks and let’s see how you fair.

31. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) says:
    28 Apr 2006  at  07:29 am | #

    Andrew:

    Jimmy Joe Meeker just called you out!

    I think it’s time for that column about whether your street is “tough enough”!

32. Bearman says:
    28 Apr 2006  at  08:34 am | #

    I’m a proponent of responsible development, but throwing 700 people in jail in the small window of a few weeks is anything but. It’s neither economically feasible nor compassionate (whichever side of the brain you think with). It is unethical to make potential new residents feel safe by taking away the safety and consistency of the current residents.

    Am I the only one who caught the fact that the article states that 67% of those arrested DO NOT live in OTR.

    Joe,
    What if police are enforcing unjust laws? You may not consider the marijuana law unjust, but let’s say tomorrow they passed a law saying blacks couldn’t drink in white drinking fountains. Would you still support the presence of cops with AK-47’s stationed by the drinking fountain?

    Bad analogy.  Pot laws were already on the books; the enforcement was just made tougher. 

    I have never smoked pot but agree there needs to be an overhaul on the war on drugs.  In fact the entire justice system could probably be overhauled such that penalties include more house arrest (with bracelets) and increased community service.  The real question to ask is are there an overabundance of non-violent offenders locked up in the county jail.

33. JoeRo says:
    28 Apr 2006  at  01:03 pm | #

    Jimmy Joe seems to forget the fact that a lot of the drug buyers are white people from the ‘burbs. These folks need to be locked up, too.

34. NOJOE says:
    28 Apr 2006  at  01:29 pm | #

    Jimmy Joe doesn’t know most people in OTR are working poor and pay taxes.

35. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) says:
    28 Apr 2006  at  08:57 pm | #

    Dealing with wealth disparity will accomplish nothing.
    Locking everyone up for good will accomplish nothing.
    Gentrifying will accomplish nothing.
    Trying to agree on who should be doing all the dealing and locking and deciding whose property is whose… maybe that would accomplish something… because it would clarify that we will never agree.
    If you think some imaginary, benevolent friend called “government” can find a consensus and perform these miracles, call me Doubting Thomas.

36. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) says:
    28 Apr 2006  at  11:41 pm | #

    Mr. Gallaher!

    I disagree that dealing with wealth disparity is futile. But if you insist on relying on the present form of government as a condition, I will agree.

    Dieter

37. Jimmy Joe Meeker says:
    29 Apr 2006  at  04:21 am | #

    Gentrification does accomplish something, and something positive at that; it drives the bums out and opens neighborhoods up to decent taxpaying citizens to live, shop and play in them.

38. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) says:
    29 Apr 2006  at  08:58 pm | #

    Jimmy Joe Meeker,
    Let’s do some cost/benefit analysis:
    Alleged benefit:  decent taxpaying citizens living, shopping, playing
    Alleged cost:  driving bums out

    The jury’s decision?

    Mitigating factors:  bums like to live, shop, and play too.
    Not all bums run with scissors.

39. TomK says:
    30 Apr 2006  at  02:03 pm | #

    FUCK THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN OTR.

    We taxpayers have every bit as mush right to live, work and play in OTR as do the non-taxpayers that currently infest the neighborhood.

    I agree that OTR belongs to no particular group of people but if you had any idea how ignorant this comment makes you sound you would take a deep breath and suck it all back in if you could. 

    First you say fuck you to the people who live in OTR (fuck you too, btw) and then you say that you have as much of a right to OTR as the non-taxpayers who “infest” it.  You are talking about two different groups of people - those who live here and those who engage in criminal activity here.  Until you recognize that distinction, your comments about the neighborhood will have very little meaning. 

    OTR residents should not be forced out, though building maintenance issues will effectively do so over time.  Slumlords will allow the buildings to deteriorate to uninhabitability, where only market-rate tenants or owners can afford to return them to habitable conditions.  The past decades have shown this in action.  On the other hand, the folks who see OTR as their criminal playground (which includes both buyers and sellers, johns and prostitutes, etc.) should be forced out by the strictest law enforcement methods.  They have no defensible “right” to be here.