That’s an idiom from 17th-century England (in Latin, “Quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat”), stemming from ancient Greek roots. It keeps coming up, because human behavior seemingly keeps right on confirming it.
The latest manifestation is from Virginia.
The Northern Virginia Regional Gang Task Force (NVRGTF) announced it would stop using the GangNet database that catalogs thousands of gang members in the DC Metropolitan area after activists complained it had a disproportionate number of minorities entered into it.
. . .
GangNet is more widely used by more than 120 law enforcement agencies in the greater Washington, DC area that includes densely populated counties in both Maryland and Virginia.
The Office of National Drug Control Policy’s Washington/Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) runs the database, according to The Washington Post.
The office said GangNet had been in use for about 10 years in the area and has about 7,800 gang members in its database.
. . .
HIDTA Executive Director Tom Carr said GangNet regularly helps investigators solve gang-related cases, The Washington Post reported.
“The whole purpose of the system is to identify all the different gangs and their members operating in the area,” Carr said. “It is merely a pointer system.”
He said that dropping GangNet could be detrimental to law enforcement, The Washington Post reported.
“It could really hamstring investigations and jeopardize officers’ safety by not being able to know you are dealing with an identified gang member,” Carr explained.
The GangNet database is also used by local jails and prisons who screen new inmates for gang affiliations to figure out where to house them safely within the inmate populate, The Washington Post reported.
Critics of the database have said that it contained a disproportionate number of minorities … But Carr said that wasn’t what was happening to create the disparity in numbers.
He said the majority of the gangs in the Washington area draw from minority communities, The Washington Post reported.
There’s more at the link.
I’ve served as a prison chaplain. I’ve encountered literally thousands – perhaps, over the course of my work there, tens of thousands – of gang-bangers. They’re almost all “minorities” – strongly Black, with lesser numbers of Hispanics of various origins, and some from even smaller minorities such as Vietnamese or Somalis. They’re overwhelmingly more likely to form criminal gangs than other racial or ethnic groups. Every street cop or corrections officer can tell you that. It’s a matter of fact. It’s the plain and simple truth.
For some damned fool to complain that the preponderance of “minorities” in a list of gang-bangers is because of racial discrimination is so utterly stupid as to defy reality. Even worse, for some damned fool bureaucrat or politically correct nitwit to stop using such a valuable law enforcement resource as a result . . . that’s reckless endangerment of the community and of police officers, if you ask me. Now responding officers won’t know whether they’re dealing with a gang problem, rather than individual criminals – and that might cost them their lives.
This is so stupid that I can’t find the words to condemn it sufficiently. Welcome to politically correct policing, Virginia. I hope you enjoy it – but I can reliably predict that you won’t.
Peter
Some of the same people think they control there sexual identity. They have a rather fluid grasp on common sense or anything approaching what we would consider to be logical thought processes
It certainly seems like the state of Virginia will be a practical test bed to see how the remnants of the United States shake out.
– Draconian gun laws
– Dozens of 2nd Amendment "sanctuary" counties.
– Proximity to "Mordor on the Potomac".
– Heavily urban dense: https://www.icip.iastate.edu/tables/population/urban-pct-states
– Racial "fault lines" galore: http://racialdotmap.demographics.coopercenter.org/
Get out of the cities…
Didn't you know? That's obviously your inherent racist tendencies coming out, Peter. /sarc
In all seriousness, this is just another step on the path the Venezuela – using criminals to keep the disarmed populace huddling in fear. We've already seen the "if you call the police on (insert racial minority here), you're a racist who wants them dead!" campaign, followed by the no-penalty arrest & release policies. I'd hate to be in a city right now.
Remember also that when Venezuela confiscated guns from the law-abiding citizens, they gave them to the criminals and thugs to use against those same citizens.
John in Indy
"disproportionate". I sometimes wonder if any of the people who push these narratives have ever held a dictionary.
va also decriminalized drugs, prohibited cops from stopping cars for minor infractions, blocked no-knock warrants, defunded sheriffs to a degree, and a host of other measures intended to "address the disparity". it'll be a free-for-all this spring as the weather warms. all while trying to ban guns and destroy our culture. hot time in the city coming. glad i don't live in one.
The preponderance of "minorities" in the list of gang members is actually due to racial discrimination. The gangs discriminate against whites and won't let them join.
I've seen it on the local law enforcement level. A very good cop getting punished for using street slang in front of a commissioner. The dropping of a visual database of drug dealers, available to the street cops on their laptops, because of too much non-diversity of faces. The local jail not taking tattoo photos of minorities because that makes it too easy to 'discriminate against.'
And, not enforcing certain laws that are red-flags of extremely bad behaviour, like noise ordinances and such.
The local prosecutors' office auto-reducing the levels of crimes of minorities to make the system 'fair.'
Every measure taken to 'stop discrimination' just racheted up the levels of crimes, and the numbers of people doing crimes.
Can't even imagine what it's like living someplace where they've decriminalized theft, like San Fran.
The dumb is getting really strong with NoVa government. There's a reason the rest of the Commonwealth calls them "occupied territory."
I wonder how many members of Congress – former, current, and future – are i that database?
I know individuals who are and hang with gangbangers personally. The culture is anathema to our Constitution and deadly. Two 16 old blacks shot each other to death over an argument last week here. To ignore culture by invoking race is a disservice to the community.
From another great writer…,
AS BARRACKS-ROT ABOUT THE AFRIKANER BOND BEGAN TO circulate, the Imperial soldiers rechristened the Afrikaners “Bros. ” For obscure but obvious reasons, the cowboys were immediately renamed “Cons. ‘ ‘ This resulted in stiff protests—after the cowboys told the Boers what a “Bro” was—which resulted in a stiffly worded directive from Colonel Lynch to desist, whereupon the Imperial soldiery began calling them all “Stills” because they were still Bros and Cons.
A Small Colonial War.
Funny thing hereabouts, there now exists that radical racial funny known as minority majority. They're still the oppressed even though they are in the majority. There must be some other factor at play here.