Yesterday in Pinellas County, FL three teenage girls stole a car from a man who had given them a ride (he foolishly left them in the running car while he went into a store, and they drove off). At some point in the early hours of the morning, the cops started following the stolen car, which the kids were driving with no headlights in pre-dawn darkness.
The cops say they weren’t in hot pursuit, simply following the car, but the kids were trying to get away and ran off the road into a weed-choked pond, where the car sank in 15 feet of water. The cops tried to get to the car but couldn’t save the girls, who all drowned.
All three girls had run-ins with the law before, including for auto theft, which is apparently a huge problem in the county. Here’s what Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said:
“We have been plagued for over a year with excessive auto thefts being committed by young, primarily black young people,” Gualtieri said. “There were 2,779 cars reported stolen in Pinellas in 2015. Between July 1, 2014 and June 30, 2015 juveniles in Pinellas county were charged with 1733 felonies.”
Gualtieri said there has to be a change in the system to keep young black kids from committing these types of crimes. According to their statistics, nearly half of the auto thefts in 2015 were committed by young black juveniles.
“Kids stealing them are using them for joy riding committing, other crimes like drug deals, the armed robbery, and then just dumping the cars… Law enforcement chasing these kids and arresting them is not solving a thing. The solutions need to come from deep within the community. Three dead teenagers is not acceptable.”
I agree that three dead teens isn’t acceptable. But here’s my question: What is the point of bringing the dead kids’ race into it?
Is the (white) sheriff trying to do the Bill Cosby shouty thing at the local black community, most of whose kids aren’t stealing cars? Does he think there are specific anti-auto theft techniques that would work with black kids that can’t be applied across the board to any kids who steal cars?
In short, what the actual fuck?
Trentrunner
What is the point of saying they’re black?
So that America doesn’t have to care as much. Some will even be relieved, or glad.
You were asking rhetorically, right? This is America.
Major Major Major Major
That… huh. What an asshole.
gene108
The problem with this statement is that most car thefts were committed by juvies. The issue is he does not make a distinction as to what percentage of arrest are black versus other races.
Either he has facts to back his assertion or he’s generalizing.
**************************
As has been posited in America for several centuries, members of the black race are more prone to violence and crime than other races.
This drives a lot of modern day thinking, because centuries of stereotyping get drilled down into our beliefs, either knowingly or unknowingly.
gwangung
That includes Democrats and progressives. 76% of even them think of blacks as more violent.
Anya
What about the other half? Will the Sherif yell at these communities the same way?
RaflW
So I just spent the past 48 hours at a conference for LGBTQ funders. This is a group that is pretty focused on race, racial justice, and what is often these days referred to as intersectionality. As in, we have a lot of work to do at the intersections of race, class, gender, gender expression/identity, sexual orientation, age, etc.
A ton of what got talked about is the idea that people in the impacted communities best know the solutions to the issues negatively affecting the community. When the sheriff says “The solutions need to come from deep within the community. Three dead teenagers is not acceptable,” he is absolutely correct.
But here’s the thing: when the solutions do come from deep in the community, they need to be resourced. As in, money. Also, support. Which means not having outsiders say “I don’t think that idea will work (because I didn’t think of it is the subtext I suspect a lot of the time), so I don’t want to pay for it.” Or, I’ll nitpick the idea to death rather than saying “Fascinating idea, what leadership development do you need to be the people who will enable that solution to flow?”
Black, brown, Asian, queer, trans, poor. These communities know their problems. They don’t need whitesplaining. Or straitsplaning. Or I’ve always had a penis-splaining. Communities need money, care, nonjudgmental attention. Accountability is OK, but that has to flow both ways of course.
I don’t know anything about this sherriff. I hope there are people on the ground there who can let him know how right his ‘deep in the community” statement is. And then ask him, what is the wider community donna do to give those in deep the tools and love they need to do it?
Baud
I can see juveniles in one identifiable social group getting caught up in the latest thrill seeking, law breaking fad. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone suggest that the “solutions need to come from deep within the community” when the community is a white one.
guachi
Pinellas County: 10.9% black.
Pinellas County: 17.1% under 18
Pinellas County: (roughly) 2% black under 18.
Auto thefts in Pinellas County: 50% black juveniles.
Maybe he can do math, unlike you, and can see that blacks are, for whatever reason, far more likely to steal cars.
If there is some specific reason why (a) young and/or (b) black people are stealing cars the sheriff would like to target that reason.
ant
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZTa8Nh0VlE
Anya
POTUS is doing a press conference to remind the nation what a POTUS looks like.
Baud
@Anya: I wonder how much he paid for his suit.
RaflW
Hopefully my full comment will get outa moderation jail soon. {Edit: it did!] But the sheriff is on to something (even if he didn’t intend to be). The answers to problems plaguing black communities do need to come from deep in the community. Those are the people closest to the issues, and they are not stupid.
The real question is, if the black community offers locally relevant, community-based solutions, will they get funding? Will they get support? Or just more racist victim-blaming, ’cause that’s what is probably at the heart of his comment … but it could get turned around.
Mnemosyne
As we all know, white criminals are individuals who represent only themselves, while black criminals represent their entire race.
I swear, I’m going to start going up to people and personally apologizing for the crimes of John Wayne Gacy. After all, as a white person, I’m partially responsible for his actions, right?
Anya
@Baud: I am more interested in his barbar
LAO
My mother used to practice law in family court representing abused and neglected kids. And she would talk about her cases, in a very general way because they were upsetting to her. Her mother, would invariably always ask whether the parents were black. It got to the point where my mom would always respond “no, they are white.” Whether it was true or not. It was so remarkably racist and if anyone called her out, my grandmother was unable to see why.
RaflW
@guachi: And here’s my first guess: Jobs.
They need access to jobs and they need all the hard f’ing community work (and money, did I mention money!?!) that a long-disadvantaged community needs to get them ready to have those jobs.
It’s not complicated, really. It’s difficult. Very. I’ve been a tiny tiny cog in the wheels here in Minneapolis trying to get more job growth in low income POC communities. We’ve been at this one particular project 7.5 years and we’re making progress but it’s damn hard work.
But it is, so often at the core, just that: Jobs.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
what’s the point of this statement;
“We have been plagued for over a year with excessive auto thefts being committed by young, primarily black young people,” Gualtieri said.
Gee, we live in a car culture, these teens parents are poor thanks to their parents being in an economic recession while black so the only way these teens can get a car is to steal one. And teens are dumb. That point needs to be emphasized when it comes to self righteous assholes justifying shooting teens.
Baud
@Anya:
Obama has an elephant?
Betty Cracker
@guachi: If you don’t see the problem with publicly otherizing an entire community, most of whom haven’t committed a crime, I can’t help you.
LAO
@Mnemosyne: Well, speaking only for myself, when I hear about a large fraud or Ponzi scheme, a part of me always thinks ” please don’t be a Jew.” Not that I feel that I should apologize but I hate that it confirms a stereotypical anti-Semitic view of “my people.”
Obviously I don’t believe black people are responsible for crimes committed by other black people, much like Muslims shouldn’t apologize for Islamic terrorism.
Amaranthine RBG
RIP Dominique Battle, Ashaunti Butler, and Laniya Miller.
Terrible that their young lives ended so soon.
Kathleen
@Baud: Is it tan?
Baud
@Kathleen: You wanna create an international incident at the nuclear summit?
JPL
I was at an event at this high school a few days before this accident.. link The teens were white. Teenagers do stupid stuff no matter the color..
Chasing teens only allows for them to do more stupid stuff.
debbie
@Baud:
Has this become an issue, or are you riffing on Hlllary’s haircut?
Zinsky
My wife is a pediatric physical therapist and knows a lot about brain function. She always points out that a young person’s brain is not fully developed until at least age 25. I know from my own experience that is true. These girls did a stupid thing and paid with their lives. Our job as adults with fully developed brains, is to minimize the likelihood that young people doing stupid things will end up dead.
Baud
@debbie: Riffing.
debbie
@JPL:
And, in this instance, so do the parents (who I assume were in the pickup truck). Toilet paper is not fatal to flora.
Bill Murray
@RaflW: My first guess would be the cops catch (and probably go after) and the DA prosecutes the black car thieves more/harder. I am assuming his statistics really mean, black youths are slightly less than 50% of those convicted of car theft over the last few years, because convictions would be the only statistics available from which one could make such a statement
debbie
@Baud:
That just goes to show the silliness of the political campaigns. Nothing can be assumed to be farce anymore.
Baud
@debbie:
To be fair, Obama’s tan suit was a thing in the media.
debbie
@Baud:
Well, tan suits do seem to have gone the way of the seersucker suit. But I’m sure he was really just bullying the RWNJs by accentuating his Kenyan pigmentation.
jharp
How was it that the police were unable to get to the car and get the girls out?
Seems pretty doable to me.
Chyron HR
@guachi:
My guess would be their subhuman cranial structures, but I’ll have to wait for Andrew Sullivan to weigh in on the subject before I can be sure.
Chyron HR
@Baud:
Is that code for a nuclear war at the gay bar?
Gin & Tonic
@jharp: You’ve done a lot of water rescues, then?
tybee
@debbie:
He wears tan shoes with pink shoelaces
A polka dot vest and man, oh, man
Tan shoes with pink shoelaces
And a big Panama with a purple hat band
ant
I’ll just note, blacks are far less likely to know how to swim.
A Ghost To Most
@Anya:
He has a pirate?
eta: Baud beat me to it
Baud
@A Ghost To Most:
I was off by one letter.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@jharp: Getting people out of cars underwater is actually very difficult. Car doors are meant to be opened against air pressure, not water pressure, which is much greater. There are suction issues as well. Some of these could be equalized if you roll the windows down, but that can only be done from inside the car, and in modern cars, it often can’t be done if the engine has stopped due to being flooded. In most cases, they don’t have enough time to go get the equipment you need to break through the windows, since you can’t generate as much force with something like a crowbar when you’re underwater.
Villago Delenda Est
@Trentrunner: Alas, this.
These weren’t good white privileged young women out on a joy ride in which they got into a collision with another car and killed four people, who should be slapped on the wrist because they have their entire lives ahead of them, after all. They were filthy ni*CLANG* hos who deserved death for their crimes.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne: Also, Muslims must apologize for their co-coreligionists anywhere in the world, while Christians need not bother with apologizing for say the Bundy Bunch or Robert Dear, in fact, they should not apologize as all the actions of these people are fully righteous and proper, regardless what the oppressive liberal government says.
PhoenixRising
Well, given that both my robot vacuum and the facial-tagging feature of social media can’t perceive distinctions in darker shades…seriously my FB is always trying to tag 4 very different black people as the same person because of the racism that makes class photos of integrated classrooms a joke…probably. But it would be a solution that wouldn’t work installed on a black person’s car. Maybe he’d be satisfied if the rate of theft of white people’s cars dropped.
The striking assumption behind that so-called ‘thought’: The community these children are part of is black, the rest of the community is white, and law enforcement is trying to do something cross-cultural by stopping stolen vehicles.
That is a kind of segregation baked into the cake–deep within the community, because we [white LEOs] can’t impose it on Them–that is…astonishing.
seaboogie
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: When I lived in Miami, I kept a brass window punch in my car in the covered “catch-all” compartment for just this reason. There was a rash of cars ending up in canals and people dying because they couldn’t get out. Can’t imaging that has changed much.
Betty Cracker
@jharp: From the photos, I can see where it might have been an issue. Steep banks, muck, deep water, etc. it’s a tragedy.
Betty Cracker
@seaboogie: I have a mini Mjölnir replica in my car door side pocket for that reason…and for any mountains that need leveling!
dogwood
@jharp:
Everything seems pretty doable to Internet experts.
jharp
@Betty Cracker:
Those ponds are often a hell of a lot more dangerous than they look I’m sure.
Amazing to me how many die in pretty benign looking retention ponds here in the Midwest.
I just figured that with witnessing the car going in that there would be a decent chance to get the kids out.
But after watching the news clip I see the muck was too difficult to get through to reach the car.
Riccardo Cabeza
@guachi: That’s the point, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri doesn’t know the answer to either of those questions and he gave racist a false reason to hate blacks.
A fine expression of ignorance, cowardice and racism by Pinellas County Sheriff, Bob Gualtieri
NobodySpecial
The simplest solution is for people to turn off their fucking car when they park it.
The second simplest solution is for men to quit attempting to party with too-young females.
The third and hardest solution, evidently, is for people to stop treating their cars as rolling party homes. I don’t know how many times I see it from people of all colors – you go to the store, you get your ‘party favors’, and you party in your car with your friends. Then you wonder why so many young people get popped for possession, DWI, and all the other bad vehicle choices that come with it like not having a license or insurance, and then losing the car and a boatload of money they really don’t have.
Perhaps the community should start pointing out to their kids that that’s surefire self-imposed poverty.
SiubhanDuinne, Mob Enforcer
@debbie:
Earth tones?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
I can’t even.
Adam L Silverman
@Enhanced Voting Techinques: Pinellas County, where I currently reside, while being a bit better than Hillsborough County (where I grew up) on public transportation still has terrible public transportation comparative to the Northeast. This isn’t something unique to the greater Tampa, St. Pete, and Clearwater area – its common throughout the South in order to keep those people from moving around where they’re not wanted. And since Pinellas County is a very long county covering about a dozen municipalities, there is a great deal of political dysfunction. In many ways Pinellas County suffers from too much government – as in we have too many of them, not that they may be doing too many things. This all contributes to further exacerbate social, political, and economic tensions among different demographic groups within the county.
As a final note: the car theft problem is so bad that Pinellas County moves electronic sign boards around the county warning of localized increases in car thefts and asking car owners to be extra vigilant in securing their vehicles.
Tyro
I really don’t understand why people leave their cars running when they’re not in the car.
As far as solutions “deep within the community”– it’s mostly about maintaining a “social norm” against joyriding and car theft. Why did the girls steal the car? Because they had either done it before or had friends or acquaintances who did it before, and it seemed like a “normal” thing for teenagers to do when they wanted to be something fun and dangerous.
But how do you maintain that “social norm”? Well, you have to isolate and remove those who violate those norms.
In the end, are parents of kids from those girls’ neighborhoods going to refer to the girls as “reckless people who weren’t raised well” or “good kids in the wrong place at the wrong time who were victimized by the police” ? The latter will just reinforce the idea that stealing a car is a “normal” thing to do, with the only dangerous thing being the possibility of getting caught by overzealous police.
Teens aren’t rational. You have to create a set of cultural/emotional taboos to get them to practice pro-social behaviors.
ruemara
Betty, they’re black. Saying their black means you’re supposed to shrug your shoulders because those denigrated persons are always causing trouble and their own deaths. It literally means nothing more and nothing less.
Plantsmantx
I think he just wants to make the face of car theft black, and imply that it’s something white kids don’t do because they’re better. The face of drug addiction was made to be black, until recently.
xenos
The point is that up until race is mentioned, the reader is expected to be sad and to empathise with the foolish kids and their devastated families. Then race is mentioned and for many readers a door closes in their heart and they can then think “those kids were assholes, what do you expect?”
As a 50 year old American white guy I feel that door close in my heart. It is conditioning, and it is effective. I then need to make the conciousness effort to reopen it. But a lot if people immersed in the constant barrage of news that is structured to reinforce racism either give up or can’t be bothered.
policomic
“The cops say they weren’t in hot pursuit, simply following the car….” Yeah, right.
RaflW
@Bill Murray: I assume this as well. Suburban white kids joyriding = kids will be kids, maybe a traffic-ticket level offence that doesn’t show up as criminal activity. Black kid? Felony.
Donna Washington
ummm, it started with most, and then he said ‘half’. Half is not most. So, clearly they only need to stop the black half of this car theft. The other half is fine?