Death By Low Expectations Kills Urban Public Safety
By HHR | November 17th, 2009 | Category: Featured, Urban Issues | 3 comments
by Nadra Enzi
In the small minds of some as an inner city Black man I must support crack; lying; robbing; stealing; murdering, have I left out anything? This is the mountainous presumptions we scale when trying to save the inner city from its own and outside low expectations. Here’s a classic example for you:
When I and one of my PANIC ( Private Apprehension Network and Information Center ) members walked into a local precinct one fine day with a print out of a Most Wanted fugitive everyone from the secretary to the sergeant who took the lead greeted us with skepticism. He even asked if we had ” beef ” ( disagreement ) with the suspect, all based upon a shared low opinion on the part of some in law enforcement toward citizen paying their salaries from zip codes like mine.
Two Black men who all but gift wrapped someone the police had been looking for couldn’t possibly be concerned about public safety, like, two White men in the same position. Needless to say that tells us there are many moons to go in inner city/police relations. Were it not so tragic it would be funny because receptions like these provoke a community gag order when officers come around asking if onlookers have any information about a crime under investigation. When I was a kid, the welcoming committee in blue may have tried to arrest us for simply entering a precinct under color of Blackness. Is our experience progress- well, it’s something.
Death by low expectations is the legacy of racism has played out in the real-life game of cops and robbers. Tipsters who would otherwise call Crime Stoppers opt not to since, to their reasoning, Black folks don’t get paid anyway. Witnesses who can whisper where a suspect is stay quiet because instant replays of official mistreatment freeze their tongues. The net result of such institutional disrespect is regrettably, Black murders, injuries and property crimes that go otherwise unsolved or whose solution is delayed by people who harbor hard feelings toward a criminal justice system that is often rude or ignores them.
One last test study for you: One day I and two of my PANIC peers saw a young man fire a pistol into the air roughly a yard or less from where several children were playing. We never knew why he did this and immediately called 911 with real time descriptions. Units responded; allowed the shooter to get into a cab in front of them while we called in this amazing new development and let him return unmolested from around the block minutes later. This was a real morale burster to the brothers and I. My original plan of rushing the gunman ( he was only 16 tops! ) was scrapped but could have produced better results that what we witnessed.
Death by low expectations kills urban public safety and puts to sleep any real chance of removing from the most impacted neighborhoods offenders whose threat to life and property grows with every set of closed lips in these areas. One would assume unsealing them would be a top priority. Hopefully a new chief of the Savannah Metropolitan Police Department will feel the same.
All that hangs in the balance are the lives and property of Savannahians most impacted by crime- that’s all.
NADRA ENZI AKA CAPT. BLACK promotes crime prevention and self-developement. nadracaptblack@ymail.com
on 
Brother Enzi:
I believe that you should add another dimension to your analysis: The disposition of “Community Ownership”.
When you OWN the community – that murder which killed a person on your block was a murder of YOUR community member.
That drug dealer selling poison on your block is someone insuring that another person in YOUR community will not be of a sober mind to be a solutions executive.
That Street Pirate seeking to enforce “Stop Snitching” to cover his crime has committed a CIVIL RIGHTS violation within your community.
In our present state we have outsourced our communities to the police and the political establishment.
Amazingly even when there is a Democrat and/or All Black city council and mayor we STILL operate upon the assumption that outside forces run our community and seek to enforce laws that came from City Hall that are not our own – even though the representation is there in abundance.
Sadly, however, we are looking at the residue of decades of flawed strategy by the Black Establishment. They struggled hard to work ON BEHALF OF Black people instead of fundamentally working to create a strong Black people. A Black community that was self-sufficient and stood accountable for all that happened within its borders was called “Blaming the Victim”.
There is a need for a new set of messages and assumptions before we see changes take place in the areas that you speak of.
Amen my friend- who defines urban reality- US… or a thug with a gun in one hand holding his jeans up with the other. I OWN my living space, just like any other VERY concerned citizen.
thank you for your article…
not until “the women” in these communities start stepping up, these communities will remain the same.
That Street Pirate seeking to enforce “Stop Snitching” to cover his crime has committed a CIVIL RIGHTS violation within your community…where are the women?