7 People Shot, 3 Fatally, on Violent Day in Newark

[alp227]

Source: The New York Times

Seven people were shot, three of them fatally, in an explosion of violence in Newark on Thursday evening. The bloodshed was part of a spate of shootings and violent carjackings — including the carjacking of a state official — in the city over the last month.

The latest eruption began about 4:30 p.m. in the city’s South Ward. A gunman approached a group of five young men who had congregated by a bail bonds office near the corner of Avon Avenue and South 12th Street and opened fire, then fled, the authorities said. Two of them, both 16, were taken to University Hospital and pronounced dead. The others were treated there for injuries that did not appear to be life-threatening.

The dead were identified as Allen Best and Jarid Smith, both of whom lived in Newark, said Thomas F. Fennelly, chief assistant prosecutor in the Essex County prosecutor’s office and the director of the homicide unit.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/24/nyregion/24newark.html

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Similarly near where I live the city of Oakland, California laid off police officers; there are near-daily shootings there.

[alex cross]

1. It's not the laying off of the cops, they can only be reactive,

responding to the troubles. It's the lack of proactive services for our citizens that will lead to more and increasingly violent outbreaks.

[truth2power]

8. Lack of a social safety net. You're correct. But it's not the Republican way....

The neocons and teabaggers don't seem to understand....you can pay now or you can pay later.

Imbeciles.

[cyclezealot]

9. you rock.

In part of our problem.. We let the idiots monopolize the media , while we went into hiding..
We need be more confrontational with the crazies.. As recently were the 9-11 responders in the office of Oklahoma wingnut, Tom Coburn.
:nuke:

[Skip Intro]

2. Catch the criminals and put them behind bars, for a long time.

I don't know. Crime is pretty rampant in my metro area, some of it spilling over into my used-to-be cool little suburban town. But I read the local paper online daily, and so many times in reporting a crime, it seems the crime was committed by people with priors. And people who commit armed robbery getting out on $20K bail.

I know some here would sympathize with how these criminals are "driven to steal," and that the economy is so bad that good people are forced to do these types of things, but no one waving a gun and demanding your money should be winked at. They are not good people. Lock them up, for a long, long time.

[liberalmike27]

10. I sympathize with them being screwed by unemployment

generated on purpose by the rich who put the people in power that sent all the jobs away.

But screw them, lock them up forever (seems to be what you are saying?)??

It is just short-sighted thinking to expect you can just frak-over our whole country, purposely create 20 percent unemployment with "free-trade" agreements that are nothing but wholesale sell-outs of America's workers, and not end up with exactly what we're having.

I've been predicting this for a decade now. I just suggest that if anyone here reading eventually ends up pursuing a life of crime, find the very best, the newest, the most expensive gated communities to prey on, and if possible, find someone with a republican bumper sticker. (ha)

They'll never understand the error of their ways unless it affects them directly.

[Mz Pip]

22. I'm with you on this

I seriously doubt that people who engage in carjackings and drive by shootings are doing so because their unemployment ran out.

There are millions of people who are barely getting by and they don't resort to ramdomly shooting people.

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. Cory the wonder boy appears to be having problems

Interesting.

[Sirveri]

4. It's not the lack of cops, it's the lack of good jobs.

Hopeless people who are not helpless will take actions to secure their future existence. The only true fear is what happens when a charismatic enough individual is capable of organizing these people into an effective force. For on that day there will be marches in the streets that even the police will be afraid to disperse.

[Cutatious]

5. Shooting people for lack of jobs?

No, the sick fucks doing the shooting are the cause and get all the blame. Murdering someone only secures a future in prison or the grave. I refuse to make excuse for murderous SOBs.

[Sirveri]

6. So you think if these people were making 250k a year they'd be killing each other?

Not likely outside the heat of passion, because then they'd actually have something to lose. Without hope for the future and something to lose from being ejected from society it is no wonder that people commonly skirt the edges of society just to survive. If I was starving and we were fighting over a loaf of bread, I would try to kill you for it. That's simple animal nature, do what you must to survive however you can. These acts might not be directly related to the current economic condition, but I fully expect to see them become more commonplace as the support for those at the bottom continues to exhaust and the poor are left with no other alternatives to provide for themselves.

[Cutatious]

7. So you think these people were killed for a load of bread? (sic)

Myself, I would never kill a person for food. I would, however, harm them if they were attempting harm another for greed, food or out of hate.

Bottom line is that lack of money, food or jealousy is not excusable for killing people.

[lonestarnot]

11. How do you know? You've probably never really been hungry.

[Hestia]

13. Exactly Lonestarnot - read The Grapes of Wrath & They Shoot Horses Don't They?

to give an idea of how desperate people were then; and then look at the crack explosion of the 1980s when Raygun dismantled social safety nets - an explosion in crime. Now here we are again. I understand why people would sell drugs and do desperate acts to eat. I am sure when you are confronted with a loaf of bread and fighting someone over it that everyone would do the right thing and do no harm to that person. But we are not personally at that point, and there is no way to know what you would do to feed your kids. It's easy to be moral when you have a job, roof over your head, and food in your family stomach.

This is one aspect of history that doesn't really get written about - the abject poverty and crime throughout the ages. It is not new in our time and we constantly relive history. It's hit and miss in novels and nonfiction, but not really one where the history of this is really covered. The history here (US) is everyone going their own way instead of pitching in with others and living outside the paradigm - a good depression era movie "Our Daily Bread" touches on this point.

[emilyg]

16. I've been hungry - yet never

shot or robbed anyone.

[Celeborn Skywalker]

23. Then

why is crime so much higher in poor areas if it's not related to income?

[X_Digger]

27. I grew up dirt poor.. and never turned to crime.

I was miserable, but I wasn't Les Miserables.

[Celeborn Skywalker]

24. Then

Why is crime so much higher in poor areas if it's not related to income?

[X_Digger]

28. Crime more closely correlates to illegal drug activity, rather than poverty.

The county I grew up in was consistently one of the poorest / most unemployed in the state, yet was always in the top ten safest re crime.

Then there's the 90's v today. Today's murder, robbery, aggravated assault rates are quite low, compared to the 90's. Yet we have more unemployment now than they did then. (~6.1% v 9.8%)

[KansDem]

15. "So you think if these people were making 250k a year they'd be killing each other?"

I've been wondering when this kind of violence would be beginning. I don't condone it, but let's face facts: you put a section of the population into poverty with no hope and you should expect reprisals.

Especially when the "capitalist" meme of "I worked hard and therefore should succeed" is no longer valid. I wonder if the TARP bailouts, the bailouts of Wall Street and the Banks, will have a corrosive effect on our society. We simply cannot pretend we are a "capitalist" economy when failed "capitalists" are rewarded as winners. Where's the accountability? Where's the justice?

I expect violence against the wealthy will occur at some point in the not-too-distant future. As I said, I don't condone such violence but what happens when homeowners are thrown out of their homes for no fault of their own due to banker malfeasance and greed, or when hard-working employees are laid off because their jobs are outsourced to another country because it means more money for the "investors," or when Congress continues to favor big business over the average citizen with outrageous "public policies;" all such actions planned and executed by the wealthy 2% for their benefit only?

The wealthy will need their gated communities...

[Cutatious]

18. That should only happen in a Mad Max scenario

Or if society completely collapses. Any other violent activities perpetrated by those acting out for reasons of greed, laziness or just plain hate will not be tolerated.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

21. Do you deny that an increase in poverty causes an increase in crime?

[X_Digger]

29. I do, and the DOJ agrees with me..

Our poverty rate is about the same as it was in 1994..

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/9/16/902340/-Poverty-rate-highest-since-1994,-income-gap-increasing

The poverty rate surged to 14.3 percent last year as the recession took its toll on incomes, the Census Bureau said Thursday. A record 43.6 million people were in poverty in 2009.

The poverty rate was up from 13.2 percent in 2008 and was the highest rate since 1994.

Yet at the same time...

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/glance/cv2.cfm

[11cents]

12. I live in Oakland. Believe me, it's lack of cops too.

What works is a combination of programs for parolees and "at-risk youth" with more and better-trained/intelligently deployed cops. It's scary feeling like you're simply prey with no protection. Violent criminals are not future revolutionary cadres. This is about day-to-day reality, not dreams about a "charismatic individual" (oy) leading The Masses.

[Sirveri]

20. Oakland wouldn't need so many cops if the people there had a chance at a real future.

But the majority of them aren't white so... I live close enough to Oakland to basically know how it works. Also know plenty of people who don't want to pay additional taxes to support a police force that is incompetent at best and totally corrupt at worst. In a society with full employment and every had equal access to a viable future crimes like these wouldn't happen nearly as often as they do now. People would have something to lose, right now they have nothing to lose, no point to acting like a member of society when your best hope of gainful employment is working at burger king for your entire life and dying alone and penniless in the street.

[X_Digger]

26. Crime does not correlate to poverty.. or unemployment..

Crime went down in 2010, as it did in 2009, 2008, and 2007.

That's in the face of increasing unemployment and poverty.

[MadMaddie]

14. We have prison systems that are holding pot smokers

for life and let murderers out on "finding religion, early parole, horribly low sentence".

We have cities and towns that are dying because any good job has been exported.

There are so many things that must be fixed to stop these crimes but there is no money.

[sulphurdunn]

17. I believe that an inverse realtionship

exists between the state of the economy and the rate of crimes against persons and property. As the economy tanks, crime rates go up. As the economy goes up, crime rates tank. Create a full employment economy that pays livable wages, lock up violent criminals (the predators)and white collar criminals (the parasites) for a very long time and voila! It isn't rocket science.

[X_Digger]

30. The data doesn't bear that out..

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=kfa

Lots of graphs showing a general decline in crime..

[Ruperto31]

19. I used to teach at Bergen School in Newark.

The kids told me stories every day about shootouts on the streets where they lived. At first I thought they were making this up or that it was something they had seen on TV. But no. It was real. The kids liked to come to school because it was the safest place they could be.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

25. And 8,724,553 weren't.

:think: