So in Need of Just One Ordinary Honorable Man
Posted in Greensboro City Council
Dec. 11, 2007 at 11:55
by BrendaBee
Cara Michele and I did the figures on Greensboro bleeding. And Joe wrote his usual well thought out and annotated commentary on the meeting on crime the city council has called. His commentary offers cautions and possible answers whereas ours merely offer figures. I hope the council members read and study Joe's information and I hope they check the records where Cara Michele and I got our stats. This is an excellent start for the council to take. That they began immediately is a happy surprise.Cara Michele created a graph of homicides by year, and I did all crime from 1998 to 2007 under three police chiefs. In 2004, the first full year under Wray homicides actually dropped to an unheard of low of 15. This was also a full year of the newly implemented by Wray revolving shifts where experienced police officers were on the streets at night when violent crimes are much more likely to take place. Then in 2005, the year Johnson was on Wray’s back at every turn, crime started back up.
Actually if you look at the numbers crime is not as rampant as some would like us to believe. Greensboro has long been a lovely cover over an ugly underbelly. Our fair city has for many years ranked well above the national norms in crime and I suspect, though I didn’t look it up, that we rank very high among cities of our size. That it is now getting far out of control however is no exaggeration. I might also note here that our city and county governments have for many years been controlled by a group that was more interested in lining their own pockets than in any good they might do as leaders. That Greensboro has come as far as it has is due to the business community and not to the elected leadership who have been controlled by these factions. Another dirty little secret no one wants to admit however.
Another dirty, sad and of course not to be mentioned at all truth concerning crime in Greensboro is our large minority community. There is a map on the police site showing where crimes take place. The majority and the most violent are in those areas predominantly minority in makeup. Which goes to the much greater problem we have with the disintegrating lower class Black community that Sen. Patrick Moynahan warned us of in the 1960's. Crime is merely the most visible manifestation of this disintegration. And again, our Black leadership instead of fostering a "we can better ourselves" attitude among the minorities have instead chose to cast them in the role of passive victims.
I have always felt sorry for Tim Bellamy. He was probably a fairly decent police officer and a fairly decent command officer, but he was never meant to be Chief of Police. Now he will go down in history as a miserable chief when he should never have been put in that position in the first place. He walks and looks like a bent and beaten man and I suspect strongly this is not a matter of poor posture but this is exactly how he feels. I would so admire him if for once he has the guts to stand up in the special meeting on crime the council has called and tell them exactly what happened and why Greensboro is where it is. Of course this will never happen because it would take a big man to do this and sadly we don't seem to have any of these left in Greensboro. I suspect the last one we had was locked out of his office.
It will be interesting to see if the council members do their homework and check out the stats before going into this special meeting, or if they just go into the meeting with their heads where their predecessors kept theirs. BB
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Dec. 11, 2007 - a..
Billy The Blogging Poet"I suspect the last one we had was locked out of his office."
I hope you're wrong but I'll hope for the best.
Posted by Billy The Blogging Poet
