This post was painful to write. Not just from the point of the constant pain that comes from my scalp or the early morning hours needed to prepare to work with young minds and their behavior. It pains me to write about soundbites that places gang activity in certain neighborhoods. Let's be clear about those certain neighborhoods that these political leaders are talking about that are riddled with gang activity. These selected neighborhoods are where the majority of African-American lives in our city.
Gangs
This post is my thoughts from someone who studied criminal justice, worked in the African-American community, worked in the criminal justice system. Someone who was taught by the former Police Chief of Fort Wayne, some prosecutors, and some judges who currently sit on the bench here in Fort Wayne. I have been taught by experts in the criminal justice field outside of the city of Fort Wayne. I served briefly on a Innocence Project in the State of Indiana. So, I am not giving any direct evidence to anything that I posted just my observations.
Back in the 1980, out of town gang members took advantage of Fort Wayne failure to invest dollars in certain part of the city. Gang members brought in drugs and money. Fort Wayne's Midwest mentality was brain dead on drugs and gang involvement. Law enforcement hicks were not that smart and had to rely on outside law enforcement training and on the ground street cred information about gang activity and drug trafficking. Fort Wayne goal was to follow the money. The need to follow the money was to find the source, the supplier. In the meantime young African-American males could make easy money standing on street corner introducing folks to crack cocaine.
Young and naive
Fort Wayne African-American families do not have a long tradition of belonging to gangs. The culture was introduced to the African-American through outsiders and television. Many young folks had no history of what it meant to be a part of a gang. Some of these young folks participated in group activity, and with that association were identified as gang members. These young folks began to emulate the dress code and hand signs of Detroit and Chicago gangs. Fort Wayne had entered the culture of cliques. Cliques in dealing drugs and growing it memberships to sell crack cocaine in the naive Fort Wayne. Fort Wayne African-American community was geographically located in the same areas but in clustered neighborhoods, separated only by school selections. Not gangs, but schools.
Drug trafficking not gangs.
From the 1980 to the 1990, Fort Wayne's lost manufacturing jobs. Money from the sell of crack cocaine supported and maintained many businesses that remained behind in the core of the city. The battle over the money lead to long sentences to those who were dealers in the central city. Those who were caught were held up as example on the city's tough on crime stance. Many of those who were arrested were users of crack cocaine were African-American males. Crack cocaine suppliers began to change with the arrest of African-American males.
The race to incarcerate
The picture was painted that the drug problem was an African-American problem. Law enforcement would focus on crack dealers hidden in pockets of African-American neighborhoods. Drugs were funneled into poorer neighborhoods by the new suppliers of the drug cocaine. These new suppliers lived outside of the African-American community but lived in the city.
No longer just selling in the African-American neighborhood
But because of the highly addictive nature of crack cocaine, opportunists began to distribute the drug within their own communities. Drug suppliers and their clientele could no longer be painted with a broad brush as a problem in the African-American community. Crack Cocaine went raced white as it moved into the suburbs.
The suburbs.
Not only was crack hitting the suburbs, but pain killers and the portable factories for manufacturing the new drug of choice, methamphetamine. Cheap drug, that did not need the deep pockets of silent partners in the crack manufacturing business into poor community. Methamphetamine was easy to get and any and everybody could play. It was hard to do a racial profile on methamphetamine makers or their users. Because the majority of the users were not the poster child of drug use; they were not young African-American males.
Raced white females.
Prisons were built mainly for males, not females. With the Clinton administration war on drugs, many African-Americans males who were simply drug users faced life in prison. Not because of any other criminal activity, but because of being in possession or using drugs. But drugs are not as exacting as the sentencing in selecting its victim. Females were attracted to crack cocaine. The cheap cost of crack cocaine introduced more women into the drug culture. Still prison were not built mainly for women. Laws drafted to punish women, by removing their children from the home were not strong deterrence. Women began to seek alternative to the highly addicted crack cocaine, they found in certain pain killers, and raced white women found it in methamphetamine.
Funding of drug use.
The drug use among raced white women has spillover to their children. A glowing example of this permissible drug use are the death of Anne Nicole Smith and her son. The culture of drug use may rob families of their wealth, but these families will try to keep hidden a family drug problem. Many of these families are seeing their daughters turn to drugs to compete among their peers.
Laws were crafted to assist these families in their fight against drugs. Rehabilitate is offered for these families rather than a criminal record. Insurance companies offered counseling to these families in fighting addiction.
So it pains me to see raced white men stand in the media and suggest that the problems in the community can be blamed on gangs. Gangs used as a code word for African-Americans in our community. The real problem, drugs, which could touch even some of their friends, family members or associates, does exist in pockets of the African-American community. But so does the drug probem exist in other pockets of the community. The drug business in Fort Wayne contributes millions and millions of dollars to raced white owned businesses. And millions of dollars in drug money leaves our community.
The problem of crime is not because of African-Americans involvement in gangs. The problem is the lack of enforcement against drugs distribution, manufacturing, and profit from the sale of drugs. Those arrests could happen outside the African-American community impacting raced white families. And elected officials do not want to be blamed for locking up raced white families.
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