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Depressing but beautifully written @jimgeorge. That graffiti, in some ways, is just as bad as burning down cities etc because the graffiti is what gets us to that point.
Jim,
A very good warning in this post. We all should take heed. A general lack of respect for property, personal or public, is a sign of anarchy. For 4 months we saw a relentless assault on property and a bizarre defense of this behavior by those supposedly in authority. The total wreckage was estimated at 2 billion dollars of property damage. Much of that damage was to black neighborhoods and black-owned businesses. This made the ridiculous claim that it was all about making Black Lives Matter a manifest lie.
This was about hate alright. The hopeless crazy haters who despised those who build up society making it a good place to live. In their rage, they destroy what they are incapable of creating. The racism thing was just an excuse.
Regards,
Jim
What you describe in your post is an example of “Broken Windows” policing, and why it is important. I know that I’ll get some pushback from not only the Left, as well as from some libertarians.
Some police departments will assign officers to photograph tags and place them in a binder for future prosecution. Depending upon the cost of removing the tags they can become a felony. I know of two officers that confronted a tagger after he spent around two years in the state pen. His tags were reappearing and they paid him a visit and told him that he would be on his way back to the state pen if they paid him a second visit.
I’ve worked city parks that were becoming a shooting gallery for heroin addicts. Discarded needles, and taking control of a park. Proactive police work is not pretty at times, but it is necessary to protect the community, and the right of taxpaying citizens to use the parks they are paying for and enjoy.
Graffiti is terrible. It signifies disorder and decay and giving up. I don’t blame you at all for being so upset. I hope it is cleaned up soon so that order and serenity can be restored.
I’m so sorry, Jim, for the assault on your beautiful environment. I never could figure out, either, why the broken windows policy went out of favor. I was doing work with police departments when it became popular, and it was definitely more than what they would call the “flavor of the week.” When areas began to be violated, law enforcement had to act, and quickly, as @dougwatt says and knows so well.
I don’t think you are petty in your reaction at all. These factions are determined to violate our spaces whenever they can. It will get worse. I suspect here in Polk County we will see it too. My heart is with you and your family.
Broken windows policing went out of favor because a disproportionate number of the miscreants have skin of a darker hue. Modern leftists always assume that those judged guilty in such circumstances have been judged by the color of their skin, when in fact they have been judged by the content of the character revealed by their misdeeds.
It is black supremacy, a strange phenomenon as the bulk of its adherents seem to be of a lighter hue.
I don’t know. And yet I do.
During my travels, I have been shocked and astounded by the prevalence or lack of graffiti in certain cultures.
In China, I do not recall any graffiti. In Mexico, it was on every public surface.
In some areas of Europe, it is seems to be considered high art, where graffiti takes on more of a mural affect.
I liken graffiti to tattoos. In our culture, both are becoming so main place, that their existence no longer evokes an image of disrespect, revolt or anarchy, but of mainstream happenings. I don’t have tats, nor do I tag public places. In the former, you can do whatever you want to your own body. In the latter, we have as a society, lost our respect for property and ownership, so tagging a public or private surface no longer has Bad (as in in judgmental good vs bad behavior) connotations. Just someone expressing themselves… We are not allowed to judge. (ref: critical race theory).
Move along, nothing to see here besides the red paint.
I have been hoping that the riots were manufactured and the reason was the election, and that when the election was over the rioters would go home. I have two more weeks before that is tested.
Can you clean it up? Seems like I recall that part of the broken windows approach was not to let the windows stay broken for long, so that a new break looks abnormal. If the wood is unfinished, a battery operated belt sander should do it.
That is the sort of thing the government will send the police to arrest you for.
See, they don’t want order, they want us terrorized.
Jim – at least you’re in Florida where law enforcement and Gov. DeSantis are a lot more no nonsense than out West. That being said, I hear you and I am stunned at what has happened to our country in so short order. When I watched Glenn Beck back in 2010-2011 when they filmed the anarchists in Greece, he said it’s only a matter of time – same symbols, graffiti, people shooting up in broad daylight (homelessness – the walking dead), riots, fires, hurling things at police. He saw it. I didn’t believe it would happen here.
This is bigger than the U.S. – it’s happening globally. I tune in to Dr. Robert Moynihan’s Vatican Pilgrimage tours via Zoom each week and a priest that presents on Wednesdays keeps saying, “Clearly there is something going on.” They can see and sense this is not business as usual. The defacing of not only monuments (to erase our memory of history and replace it), but religious sites shows something else.
Refuse to be fearful. Know that God is in control – stay close to your faith, even if its on line. Moynihan said ‘we are going through a period of purification and we have to go through it.’ Read the letter than Archbishop Vigano sent to President Trump:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/sep/24/archbishop-vigano-trump-faces-biblical-challenge-a/
As @frontseatcat says – refuse to be fearful. But I feel less fearful than sad at the purposeful destruction of a serious work of art: living by the rule of law. I don’t think you are an overreacting pajama boy. I think you are a realist accepting what is plain and advertised by its advocates: there are those who want to revert to a less civilized time and rule by power. I’ve been as comfortable as anyone else living my whole life under the protective shield of the rule of law and I never ever expected that it would not be there. Civilization has to be defended every single day and it seems now the defense will require more substantial action (by the average person) than we’ve demonstrated for the last say 80 years – since the last overt onslaught. But it’s always there. You’re not wrong @jimgeorge. It’s sad.
We left California in 2017 to get away from traffic and what looked like coming disorder. We still go back to see kids and grandkids, or did until last spring. We are planning to go back next weekend. Our daughter’s birthday is the 30th but we told her we don’t want to be near Los Angeles that close to the election. She lives in Santa Monica and there have been riots and looting not far from her home. The other kids are in Orange County, which is safer but not safe enough. My younger son’s daughter has been accepted to U of Alabama and the parents will move as soon as he can retire.
They were judged guilty because they did it.
Broken windows policing isn’t just about broken window, or graffiti, or any other crime in particular. It turns out to be as I once heard an NYPD officer relate, that some of the turn-style jumpers have warrants for car burglary, or mugging little old ladies, or what have you.
Yes, it should come as no surprise that individuals that cannot obey the little laws have no problem disobeying the bigger laws. Everyone starts somewhere before they start hitting bigger felonies out of the ballpark.
I share your disgust. I despise graffiti and senseless vandalism. In my city, many signs over our interstates have been “tagged”. It never fails to sicken me when I spot them.
We are no longer “Slouching towards Gamorrah”. We are on the bullet train……Unless we’ve already arrived at the final destination.