About 5 years ago I witnessed and video taped an act of vandalism at the apartment complex I was living in. I called the sheriffs. When they arrived, they were apathetic, and seemed more pissed at me for calling them than they were at what took place in the video I showed them. They told me my only options (get it, my options? evidently this wasn't their problem...) were to either complain to the apartment manager, or make a "citizens arrest", where the burden would be on me to produce evidence in court, and I could be sued for wrongful arrest, etc. They were clearly discouraging me from doing anything. So, I ended up just complaining to the apartment manager, these two young women that hang out and eat pizza all day. They may as well have punched themselves in the face.
Maybe I'm being cynical, nets, but I think the police protect the areas where there's lucrative real estate investment, and couldn't care less about other areas. In fact, I believe they discourage people in poor areas from calling them, and would just rather everyone killed each other. Of course they don't say this on tv. They always say they want the poor communities to get involved, but they don't mean it. The police protect the money. That's just my assessment based on my experiences.
Oak,
Ok..good points. However, as I've said before here....people in authority positions in poorer areas know full well that they aren't held accountable for anything. If you are a police chief, school board president,etc in a poor city...you have built in excuses when your stats look bad AND you generally are in charge of a district where people don't vote or are active in politics.
Pretty cushy stress free high paying job. Crime is up or test scores are down? Hey....it was like that before I got here.
Lot easier than running a safe or high performing area and having to maintain good stats.
In poor areas, issues only get addressed during election years for appearances.
Having said all that, and having grown up in a city where they followed this credo to a T., I expect apathy from city hall but there's more than one way to skin a cat. I made complaints before to my sister's township about some problems. Nothing got done. So, I sent an anonymous letter to the head guys in charge of public safety and health for the STATE....and CC'ed the sit-on-his-ass mayor. I listed the complaints I made to the town and that nothing had been done to address the issue. About a week later , that township sent a notice to residents about their "new initiative" and they addressed the issue right away.
When areas become gentrified, generally you have people who vote and with more formal education moving in. They find ways to force the formerly sitting on ass people in authority to DO their jobs. And it's not just a handful of people battling the apathy, it's the majority of them.
