Its Murder in the States

[kylumi]

Marion Barry Mayor of Washington DC recently stated.......

" outside of the killings Washington has the lowest crime rate in the country"

Just about sums what Americans consider as crime.............i guess murder does not involve money................

[kveits007]

He was probaly smokin crack again, as he just got arreasted for it again
_________________
Ken

[kylumi]

gosh.................is that really true............OMG the Mayor

[flyers2thecup]

if you were the mayor of DC, you'd want to hit the pipe every now and then, too!

typical double standard that we must deal with on a daily basis...not only in the gov't, but in our everyday lives.

[annarere1960]

these government officials have always had a double standard.......i saw on the news just yesterday.......governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's ........was caught riding a motorcycle with out a motorcycle license.......here is the following story:

Arnold Schwarzenegger's weekend motorcycle crash left him with a fat lip and a political black eye, but police won't charge the Californian governor with a traffic violation.
Schwarzenegger was on his Harley-Davidson, with his 12-year-old son in a sidecar, when he collided on Sunday with a car on a winding canyon road.
Police said he was riding without a motorcycle licence, but the Los Angeles attorney's office on Wednesday declined to file charges after reviewing the accident report.
"The city attorney will not file any charges. We will not cite him," said Officer Grace Brady, a police spokeswoman.
Although police concluded Schwarzenegger was not licenced to ride the motorcycle, they did not witness the incident and therefore "cannot go back" and cite him now, Brady said.
"We have no way of citing someone we did not observe driving," said Brady.
Prosecutors decided not to get involved because it was a minor matter that would have only resulted in a traffic ticket, said Jonathan Diamond, a spokesman for the city attorney's office.
The movie star governor needed 15 stitches to close a gash above his lip, and the low-speed accident turned into a political embarrassment after he acknowledged he'd driven motorcycles for years without the proper licence.
He told reporters he "never thought about it".
Although Los Angeles police have concluded the governor was driving illegally, the state Department of Motor Vehicles and the California Highway Patrol maintain that because his motorcycle had a sidecar attached when he crashed, it was legal for Schwarzenegger to operate it with just the standard driver's licence that he holds.
A standard licence for driving a car cannot be used to operate a motorcycle, but according to DMV spokesman Mike Miller the relevant sections of state law makes no mention a motorcycle with a sidecar. Miller said that means Schwarzenegger was operating within the law when he crashed.
"From our perspective, there is no violation," Miller said.
Schwarzenegger has not hidden the fact he has driven motorcycles for years without a sidecar attached, however, and a photo in Wednesday's Los Angeles Times showed him doing so in 2004.
In December 2001, Schwarzenegger broke six ribs and was hospitalized for four days after a motorcycle crash in Los Angeles.
That accident occurred when a car stopped in front of him and he was unable to change lanes to avoid the vehicle.
The governor's office did not respond to questions about the license. Schwarzenegger's spokeswoman, Margita Thompson, said the office was working on budget and economic development issues "where my state-paid salary is better spent".
The accident also put a spotlight on the governor's security detail. CHP officers, who are charged with protecting Schwarzenegger, had accompanied him on the ride on Sunday.
CHP spokesman Tom Marshall declined to say whether there would be any changes in the governor's security detail.


..........if it was us they throw us in jail fined us and suspend our drivers license.......
_________________
The heaviest baggage for a traveler is an empty wallet.

[blknight3]

[tkboxer]

[kylumi]

in the UK i guess we are very lucky..................no one gets murdered

as a matter of interest boxer.............was a handgun being pointed at you..at that particular time?

[tkboxer]

[Seiji]

It seems like American doesn't have many answers to its social ills, mental illness, poverty, homelessness, health care/health insurance, job-loss due to outsourcing (61% Americans fear job-loss due to outsourcing) loss of pensions, prison reform.

Our prisons are just a revolving door due to over crowding. At some point and time these prisoners are released back into society without proper diagnosis, treatment, education, OR rehabilitation. The turnaround rate is astronomical.

But I still believe "you do the crime, you do the time." I've sure some of your heard about when a Vermont judge handed out a 60-day jail sentence to a man who raped a little girl many, many times over a four-year span starting when she was seven. 60-days!

Also, reading through Iraq’s Neoliberal Constitution I came across this:

Article 7:

Iraqi citizens have the right to enjoy security and free health care. The Iraqi federal government and regional governments must provide it and expand the fields of prevention, treatment, and medication by the construction of various hospitals and health institutions.

Free health care, we don't even get that.

"Iraq war could cost US over $2 trillion, says Nobel prize-winning economist."

-Just think what we could do with that money.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1681119,00.html

[blknight3]

Seiji, I don;t now if you will remember this or not, but your comment on revolving prison door made me remember this. it happned about 10 years ago I believe in Florida.

A young man was arrested for drug possession and trafficing in Miami, and after a period of time in the local county jail sentenced to 5 - 10 years in prison. According to the report on the radio he had a record going back to his childhood, that included car theft, break and enter assault etc. He had spent more time in jail than out. However, by the time he reached the prison, due to the excessive over crowding and the manadatory ( I can't remember what they called it) reduction of sentence, so much time reduced per month served. Time off for good behaviour, and a couple of other B/S reasons, he was relased. He had already spent a year in jail waiting for this sentence.

The person telling this story was the governor of Florida. It was a talk show and they were discussing why the penal system needed revision.

Really makes one wonder
_________________
For every person with a spark of genius, there are a hundred with ignition trouble.

[talion]

the bigger part of the problem isn't just the hypocrisy, but the apathy of people at large. the fact is, that beyond coffee talk nobody really cares or thinks about crime much until it touches them directly. Most people do not particpate in any kind of anti crime program. most people could not name the victims of a murder unless it's a high profile case or someone close to them. People take no interest in it beyond taking note of a statistic. crime is so faceless now that nobody really gives a *, or we turn a blind eye to the "minor" crimes. Is it any wonder that crime flourishes? There's so many "incidental" crimes that they don't even bother to prosecute them. When's the last time somebody got busted for smoking a joint?

If we wanted to put the effort into it, like some places do, then there would be less crime. it's as simple as that. if we're not willing to devote the time, the resources or personal involvement to decrease it then we have to live with it.