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Out-of-control city endorses racial
profiling plan
By: Ron Edwards
Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder
Originally posted 8/16/2006
Minneapolis
Mayor R.T. Rybak hit a very hot “hot button” last Thursday, August 10, when he appeared with Interim MPD
Chief Nolan to announce his new “gang suppression” and “gang-fighting strategy” for the North Side:
“Deploy as many as 40 officers daily to target members of three gangs…responsible for a large chunk of the violence
on the North Side....”
....We applaud the plan to target gangs making life miserable for North side residents.
If true, nothing would make the North side happier. But justice means stopping people for whom there is evidence, not stopping
young Black men because they are out while being Black. What counts is not youth and skin color but evidence properly assembled
and prosecuted in court. The only ones who will be intimidated by racial profiling will be the innocent.
The Mayor
has given us a harassment plan, not a gang
solving plan. As the Strib reports in an accompanying article, "Police will
target 3 gangs on the North Side," this "plan" is for only one month (which alerts other gangs to carry on as
usual). How are three gangs going to be stopped in one month when for years they have been given a pass? So let's meet, RT
and and Chief Dolan, and lets talk about a long term plan to clean up the North side of gangs, including education, jobs and
housing...
....It sounds to us that the Mayor hopes that within 30 days the police will get lucky with the names in
their 3 inch binders, haul them off to some kind of incarceration, "reduce" crime (but not gangs), as the real source of gangs
are their breeding grounds: lousy schools, lousy job market, lousy housing. The solution is not the subtraction of young Blacks
but the addition of real equal access and real equal opportunity.
Full text at
http://www.spokesman-recorder.com/News/Article/Article.asp?NewsID=71830&sID=16
and
http://theminneapolisstory.com
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