aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South
Friday, November 25, 2005
What I don’t miss
Thieves are sawing down aluminum light poles. Some 130 have vanished from Baltimore’s streets in the last several weeks, the authorities say, presumably sold for scrap metal. But so far the case of the pilfered poles has stumped the police, and left many local residents wondering just how someone manages to make off with what would seem to be a conspicuous street fixture. [...]
The culprits seem to have pole-snatching down to a model of precision and efficiency, city officials say. They appear to have gone so far as dressing up as utility crews, the police say, and placing orange traffic cones around the poles about to be felled, to avoid arousing suspicion among motorists.
The missing poles have become yet another measure of the desperation in one of the country’s most violent cities. Last year, Baltimore, with a population about one-twelfth that of New York City’s, had a homicide rate more than five times as high.
An illegal drug trade fuels much of the violence. Health officials say 40,000 addicts live among Baltimore’s estimated 650,000 residents.
Now I’m sure it’s a measure of desperation; less so that it’s fueled by the illegal drug trade. Where is the documentation of that? Looks like another correlation without demonstrated causation to me.
But let’s say for a moment there is causation. Is the answer treatment and decriminalization or arrest and incarceration? Clearly, whatever they’re doing - I’m betting it’s not treatment and counseliong; we know it’s not decriminalization - IS NOT WORKING!
