Charles Brown
>>> Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> 02/07 12:19 PM >>>
Tom Lehman wrote:
>Hey Doug, how about the skinny on the ward politics where the street
>vendor was gunned down by the police on Friday.
I don't know anything about the Bronx - it's on the U.S. mainland, after all. The trigger-happy cops are an extreme instance of a concerted crackdown. I do know that the cops here are high on power and under mayoral command to act like an occupation army. Kids are arrested in Central Park just for being black or brown in the wrong neighbhood. Arrests for misdemeanors under Giuliani's "quality of life" campaign have doubled. They turned the medical concession at the Rikers Island jail over to some managed care company which has cut way back on treatment, and as a result people have died. And now and then they pump 19 bullets into unarmed people entering their apartment buildings. Rudy's mostly white constituency loves it, too.
Doug