Star columnist Mary Sanchez profiles Alvin Brooks and The Ad Hoc Group Against Crime. The anti-crime org is struggling to pay staff and stay afloat. Meanwhile, KC Proper counts 50 murders and The Summer just started.
While, I'm interested in new ways that diverse communities can collaborate and work against crime, I realize that Ad Hoc is a fine group and deserves support . . . The lack of funds for these folks while sports teams take millions is yet another example of this town's misplaced priorities.
While, I'm interested in new ways that diverse communities can collaborate and work against crime, I realize that Ad Hoc is a fine group and deserves support . . . The lack of funds for these folks while sports teams take millions is yet another example of this town's misplaced priorities.
It worked back THEN, but today, not so much.
ReplyDeleteClose them down. We are funding Aim4Peace. Why should need to fund this also.
ReplyDeleteSaw a 50 pack of candles on sale at K Mart. Diamond strike on the box matches 250 count per box packages of THREE. Ready set go fight CRIME.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know much about this "Aim4Peace" so I googled it and among other things, found KCTV had done a commercial for it, basically quoting city statistics without doing any research, and then an article with the same assertions but Tony's usual government haters badmouthing it.
ReplyDeleteSo is all we're getting for $300,000 are 22 interventions? Sounds like too much of this money is for ADMIN EXPENSES, which city governments are usually very good about getting.
KCTV's commercial disguised as an 'investigation'.
http://www.kctv5.com/news/22592537/detail.html
With all the charges, it would be good if someone would ACTUALLY investigate and look at their expenses... especially those not directly linked to peacemaking.
Is there any media left in town who can do this, or is the media now just assertions comin outta their asses, and then magnified by smoke and mirrors?
Tony's blast:
http://www.tonyskansascity.com/2010/02/aim4peace-kansas-city.html
We would not need all this if we had a Police Department that could and would do it's job.
ReplyDelete9:23 is right. Where is the creativity in the Police Department?
ReplyDeleteI mean for something OTHER THAN rationales for why we should STILL be paying for the extraordinary costs of having UNIFORMED officers staffing hundreds of purely administrative positions that other cities long ago converted to non-uniformed civilians , therby saving costs, which could then be re-deployed into creative crime prevention?
Just sayin' ... and I'M TALKING TO YOU (Mayor wannabe) Jim Corwin.
The police are all hiding in the trees trying to make money from traffic tickets. They could care less about murders. They get to feel big writing tickets to someone going 30 in a 25 mile zone. They call for back up. Get on the speaker and say stay in the car. The chickens cannot handle working on the CRIMINAL side. They Just write tickets all day and EAT.
ReplyDeleteI've never felt that about cops. I think they mostly like to get out and hassle people, play with their tasers and handcuffs and wrestle people to the ground for resisting.
ReplyDeleteActually back in the touchee feelee times of they mid 70s and early 80s, I remember some departments did have conflict resolution teams, or did at one time--designed to calm the hot heads between the Capulets and the Montagues.
But do understand, cops are about physical takedown. Negotiators require completely different skills, people skills. Marine-trained RoboCops generally don't have people skills required. Unless a class called Advanced Baton 201 is in the liberal arts and not the police combat schools.
I think it would be a good idea to move it to the police department to cut some admin expenses... and cops are quick to know who in their patrol areas could use some soft skills before someone gets killed. Including helping punk gangs whose members have way too much testosterone.
To me, thats what guys like Alonzo Washington should be doing, not just a private tipline for catching the bad people AFTER the murders!
And schools should be teaching this as part of their curricula. Required courses in how to get along with your neighors, your spouses, your parents, and the big mouth on the barstool sitting next to you.
Many years ago maybe preaching to young people and encouraging them to call the TIPS hotline worked, but any more, not so much. In fact, I've heard people talk about Ad Hoc still trying to fight an old fashioned conventional war, when what's needed now is something much more resembling counterinsurgency.
ReplyDeleteAnd in Chicago, where the Aim4Peace idea came from, a couple city councilmen just asked mayor Daley to request the National Guard from the governor, the murders have gotten so out of hand.
Elected officials in KCMO seem to think that they can delegate responsibility and contract out the fact that THEY are responsible for public safety. These not-for-profit groups efforts are fine, but in no way take the place of the city government and the KCPD.
Why don't these folks show some moral courage and creativity and have a series of joint meetings with both the police board and the city council and take some serious, rigorous, and innovative action to curb the increasingly violent and random crime in the city?
Evryone is sick of the current situation; especially the residents who find themselves living in the middle of the carnage.
let's march!
ReplyDeleteanon 3:33
ReplyDeletelet's march WITH CANDLES. You forgot the damn candles.
Money. Not a chance.
ReplyDeleteIts the culture. The Hip/Hop Holocaust of Rap, personified on the street every day ubiquitously in every direction. Thugs.
They are creatures uncarnated from a Urban Mad Max script.
And like any form of cognative dissonance in a society, they exist because they are given sanction and lionized.
The BET/MTV 5th column of hate, rape and murder, glorified at every music awards ceremony every week, speaks to a cowardly, sick and pathetic cancer that tacitly allows the parents of these 'lil wayne' doppelganger denizens of KC's 9th circle of urban hell to intimidate and wreck more and more of our society.
Money. What a joke.
Bloody fucking constraint, not money.
ReplyDelete....but Chuck, what is the answer?
ReplyDeleteAd Hoc - Not well managed, poor results to show for their effort, and money is short. Cross them off the list.
ReplyDeleteAd Hoc deserves to go away. They paid Brooks a huge salary, while he was a councilman, thereby violating City rules about councilpersons taking salaries from organizations that are funded with city funds.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to read something funny sometime, read the 990 tax returns from Ad Hoc. They bought some real expensive items in addition to paying Al's handsome salary. Money wasted. Just like Aim For Peace. They spend their budget feeding criminals, and keeping Tracy Cole employed That's all they can do and that is all they do.