Indiana

What Kind of ?Community? Is This?

By Abdul Hakim-Shabazz

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about two incidents this past weekend in Indianapolis, the shooting of Officer David Moore and the two teens shot near Circle Center Mall.   I’ve been asking myself why these types of events happen?  The easy answer of course is that there are bad people in this world who do bad things.   But to a certain degree, I think the “community” bears some responsibility for this as well.

Who is the “community”?  These are the people who live in high crime areas and won’t step up and take some control of their neighborhoods.  These are the people who don’t raise their children properly.  These are people who watch a police officer get shot and instead of calling  9-1-1, sit and watch.  These are the people who take to the airwaves and newspapers and berate law enforcement on a regular basis and then wonder why relations are bad.  That is the “community”.

This “community” that complains about crime, but won’t cooperate with law enforcement to take the bad guys off the street.  This is the “community” that complains about schools, but won’t do anything to advance their own child’s education.  This is the same “community” whose neighborhoods stay in perpetual disrepair and keep electing the same people who were incapable of fixing the problem the first time they went into office.  And this is the same “community” whose clergy is more concerned about lining their own pockets than lining the streets with hope and opportunity.

When I look at this “community” I’m really not surprised at what happens.  Unfortunately because of the actions and sometimes, inaction, of this “community” the rest of us have to deal with them to because the “community’s” problems tend to creep into our own.

Full post as published by Indiana Barrister on January 25, 2011 (boomark / email).