[Mpls] Challenge to Mayor Rybak and Black Community by DwightHobbes

[WizardMarks]

gemgram wrote:

>I do not believe I was arguing a fact.  Simply observing the obvious.  The
>crimes and criminals I was referring to are the street corner criminals and
>dealers.  
>
It is obvious that corner boys and girls are not openly working Fiftieth 
and France. What conclusion one draws is at issue for me. Dealers aren't 
uniformly stupid. They do know that they serve a specific niche market 
which market would not buy from them at Fiftieth and France if they put 
a crew on that corner and environs; however, those same customers will 
buy from a crew at Park and Franklin. For the same reason, used car 
dealers on Lake St. do not wear Armani suits on the job, they have to be 
acceptable to their markets. Ergo, the police will not be asked to 
remove corner boys from France Av. or Kenwood and Edina streets. That 
part of the market wants the whole tragic mess to keep a low profile, 
but intends to continue to partake of it. They are happy to make a "slum 
crawl" to our neighborhoods where no one knows them or knows their cars. 
For the same reason, 85%+ of graffiti sprayers who muck up walls in the 
inner city are white boys from the suburbs.

So, to say that neighbors at 50th and France would not tolerate corner 
pharmacists is not the whole story and doesn't give the picture.  Of the 
crimes being committed in the high rent districts, most of it is white 
collar crime and abuse behind closed doors. Squads of uniformed cops do 
not deal with white collar crime.

In blue, pink, and no collar neighborhoods, and immigrant neighborhoods, 
dealers put their business in the streets, not because we tolerate it, 
but because their markets prefer that. To hear ex-junkies tell it, half 
the fun of being a drug mummy is the frisson of fear which accompanies 
doing something naughty and trolling in other people's neighborhoods.

The question in my mind is this: how does looking at the customer base 
in this way forward the creation of strategies to counteract it?

WizardMarks, Central