“Boston officers shoot at suspect who fled stop in stolen SUV” and “MBTA officer, suspect exchange gunfire at T stop”.
Now, there have been times I have been tempted to stand up and fight for the rights of decent, well-behaved commuters, and say something to some young punks who are acting up on the platform. But you know that part of what’s going on in any such situation is a kind of dare–it’s a potent if primitive combination of intentional provocation and intimidation, and the fact is, a lot of these thugs are spoiling for a fight. And if they’re looking for it, they’re likely armed as well.
I’m sure I’ve mentioned the time last summer I was on the Orange line and a big gang of thugs busted onto the train, staring people down, and I ended up standing next to one, who muttered to his buddy, “I just wish someone would bump into me—I just want to beat the shit out of somebody.” I quietly made my way to the opposite end of the car.
You can bet not a one of them paid their fare, either. That’s just one of the many perks of membership in a band of marauding thugs.
Of course, there’s nothing you can do about this sort of thing, except move quietly to the opposite end of the car if you can. You do the math in your head when they storm in. You’ve got ten minutes to your stop. You can endure it. And why give them what they’re looking for? They travel in packs—or sometimes “swarms” as they’re calling it in the news now. I mean, did you see the security camera footage of the guard getting “swarmed” by a gang of young thugs on the news yesterday? If you stand up to them, who’ll back you up? Nobody, is who. Nobody wants trouble, except the troublemakers themselves. But who wants to sit there in silence and be intimidated like that?
I would say that the problem is probably not as bad as the press makes it out to be, but the numbers don’t lie. In every category, Boston crime rates are worse than the national average. Everybody knows the murder rate was up 34% in 2005. Aggravated assault, which is something much more likely to happen to just anybody in the wrong place at the wrong time, is off the hook.
Here’s an interesting article from the New York Times about the “bewildering” nature of the new surge in violent crime. I know I have banged on a good deal about eye-contact, but you’ve got to be careful these days: “mean mugging,” which, according to the article is ghetto slang for giving someone a dirty look, could get you killed.
When I was visiting my Aunt Mindy from Indy on St. Armand’s Island a couple of months ago, she told me to write an op-ed piece about conscripting petty criminals. I was like, uh, OK. You know, it goes against some of my gut convictions, but I do think a compulsory national service corps could help with the problem of youth violence, which often results, I think (perhaps simplistically), from lack of purpose, direction, connectivity with a positive community and cause, and plain old garden-variety boredom. Plus lack of prospects and hope of a better life, particularly relative to what we see on TV or in the movies, which also seems to some with violent tendencies to justify violence towards others unlike themselves.
I’m not pinning this on minorities, either. Take this thing at Duke. Whatever happened between that stripper and those Lacrosse players, one thing is for sure: it was sordid. Neither party is coming out of it squeaky clean. I heard yesterday one of the guys, who’s gone to the best, most expensive prep schools, and whom everyone says is a great student and team player, was arrested last year on a trip to Georgetown for assualting a man after taunting him with homophobic slurs. Then there’s the email from one team member, sent the day after rape accusations were made public, “announcing that the following night he planned ‘to have some strippers over’ and would be ‘killing the bitches’ as soon as they walked into his dorm room….The e-mail…notes that, after the strippers were killed, they would be skinned while the author was ‘cumming in my duke issue spandex.’” None of which proves that the young woman who claimed to have been raped was. But it would not surprise me. I certainly don’t doubt for a minute that the players taunted her with racial and misogynist slurs, though.
The picture that arises of the Duke Lacrosse team ain’t pretty, no matter how you slice it. It reminds me of the culture of “careless people” of privilege F. Scott Fitzgerald documented in Gatzby. Sometimes we forget: privilege leads to forms of violence just as surely as privation. It’s not poverty that’s to blame in our time.
Anyway, I think a real, functioning national service corps without the missionary overtones of the Peace Corps and Americorps, could do wonders. Nowadays the volunteer service corps, unfortunately, tends to draw people of privilege who sometimes go into it for the wrong reasons–to bolster their resumes, for example. And working abroad for many years, I ran into my share of Peace Corps volunteers whose attitudes towards their host cultures was downright insulting. As for Americorps or City Year, or whoever they are, whenever I see those kids on the T with their bright red jackets I feel like, what the hell? I think they should ditch the jackets, personally. Doesn’t it make you feel like “the natives” with these brave souls in their bright red jackets risking life and limb to “civilize” us, or something? We know you’re from the suburbs, but, please, try to blend.
I’m from the school of, if you’re going to do good in the world, skip the bright red jacket or the hairshirt, drop the megaphone, and just do it.
I could see the usefulness of uniforms with a conscripted army, of course. And I’m all for it. And if you made the uniforms cool enough–have Piggy-D, or Po-Diddly, or whatever the fuck his name is, design ‘em–a little beret for the lads, a sash for the ladies–you’d have a movement on your hands. The trick is to give them something real to do, not to exacerbate the problem by piling boredom on boredom. The danger is that pinheads like the pols in Washington, would get ideas about using conscripts to clean their houses, cook their meals, and chauffeur them around. Gotta make sure the rich don’t abuse it.
At any rate, I have a feeling it’s going to be a long, hot summer, and probably a senselessly violent one, too, unfortunately. What to do?
