Devon Martes was shot and killed by a Jefferson Parish Sheriff deputy last week. You cannot help but feel sympathy for his mother, a woman who has lost two of her five sons in violent shooting deaths in the last eight years. Devon was the youngest of eleven children.
“Devon was a really kind person but he just got himself caught up in too much stuff,” Martes said of her son. “He really wasn’t a bad boy, but he put himself in that situation. He put himself in harm’s way.”
Of the deputies, she said: “They had to do what they had to do.”
Sheriff Newell Normand at a press conference listed Martes’ criminal record, which, starting at the age of 10, includes shoplifting, distribution of drugs, trespassing, and attempted armed robbery . . .
“He had brand new tennis shoes he never put on. There’s no reason for you to do this,” she said. “You got a momma and a dad. That’s one blessing right there. We work, we come home. We work, we come home and we take care of them. We just took them Sunday to Gulfport, to the Gulf Island Water Park.”
Alesia Martes spoke of of how she attempted to teach her youngest son from the example of his older brothers violent death.
“Devon took Brandon’s death real hard,” Martes said. “But he loved them streets. I said, ‘Devon, you have to stop being out there. Don’t you see what happened to your brother? Didn’t this wake y’all up?’ But he was hardheaded. They’re just hard to deal with, those teenagers.”
We are being told, daily, that violence in black urban areas is the fault of the police. Actually, it is a fault that comes from too much distrust of the police. The urban black crime centers need more police, and more active policing. That can help reduce the violence.
But the crime rates will not come down to levels we know are possible until the citizens in those areas realize that the police are part of the solution, and not the problem. When that happens, fewer police will be necessary.
A false narrative has been created: police are part of the problem. It might have been true 50, even 40, perhaps, in spots, as late as 30 years ago. It is more likely that even then, the problem was neglect of proper policing, and corrupt policing, instead of too much policing. It is not true any longer.
It is time for the the black community to reject the easy blame game of the race hustlers who push the police and the “system” as the problem. Those who reject responsibility for their own communities are pushing for young black men to reject civilization and choose the path of the streets. The black urban culture has to embrace responsibility and the idea that bad choices produce bad ends.
Only then can the black urban culture start the long climb to reach the same level of peaceful existence that most of the rest of America enjoys. It will not be easy, but it can be done.
Alisia Martes shows that the base of that acceptance of responsibility is out there. She shows it when she says “he put himself in harms way.” It is a start, but more is required.
When the Internet cliché changes from “he was turning his life around” to “he put himself in harms way,” we will know that we are moving in the correct direction. When a gun is seen as a means of defense against criminals, and not as a tool of a criminal career, we will be moving in the right direction.
Guns in the hands of peaceful, responsible black people are part of the solution. When black people see that they are trusted with the same level of responsibility as is the rest of society, it helps build a community of mutual trust. When armed black men and police see each other as allies instead of adversaries, we will have started to win the war.
©2016 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.
Gun Watch
Families should be limited to one child per parent . No exceptions.
Otherwise,the US will be overrun with excess redundant people as robotics and automation take more and more work away from humans. Violence will become ten times worse than it is today and no one will be safe.
The US birth rate is below the replacement rate which is slightly more than one child per parent to make up for childhood deaths. If not for immigration, the population would actually be shrinking. (I wouldn’t at all mind a lower population.)
the rate ( births per woman) is decreasing, but, more importantly, the population is, and always has, increased exponentially, both in the U.S. and around the world. Eleven kids for a lower income family is a stunning number in our modern society, both to be able to afford/feed/provide medical services, and most importantly to properly instill values (criminality record began at 10?)
Ah ja, die Lebensraum.
Nay, we’ll just have a big war to thin the herd. Lemmings jump off cliffs, humans go to war; the net result is the same. (There is, in defense of this comment, studies that have correlated increases in population density and reduction in resources with an increase in violent behavior. The two main ways to reduce population are disease (plague) and war.)
Lemmings don’t actually jump off cliffs. That was a myth perpetrated by a disney ‘documentary’ back in the 60’s.
Yep. Lemmings have more sense than people.
The faked lemming story was in the Disney movie “White Wilderness” in 1958. My mom took me to see it first run.
I would disagree with that, though at face value it seems to make sense. If you look at the big picture though, we’re already losing ground on many fronts with changing societal norms due to immigration, etc. Maybe if we paid people to NOT have babies instead of paying them for each one, and paid them to get married and stay married, instead of vice versa, it would be helpful. Typically we reject out of hand the idea of paying people to not commit crimes, yet in the cities where it’s been done more or less correctly, it’s not only successful, it’s immensely less costly than incarceration, over and over again. Human nature is predictable, a little common sense will tell you what will work and what won’t, you just have to leave emotion and the need to dispense punishment out of the equation unless actual harm to another has been done.
Your flight to Beijing leaves today
Oh you mean more government restrictions on me “for the common good”? No thanks. But keep on being a nutjob. It suits you.
The point of an animal is to reproduce.
The society in and of itself means nothing.
We group together for the well being of the individuals. When the benefit of the society overrules that of the individual, law and order should go pound sand, not our genetic immortality.
Yes, this is exactly what we need. Big Government to tell us how to procreate and how many cars we can own and how many guns we can own and what type of food we should eat and………..
That would solve our problems. Yes that is the answer.
no bother than too many human institutions are dependent on there continuously being more of us in subsequent generations
governments have no plan for steady state or declining populations.
Isn’t that what the communist party tried to implement in China? I have 4 daughters, should I have been limited to one child?
Well “Realist” you and Hellery have your one or two little libtards. I’m raising multiple AMERICANS in a stable two parent household. Someone has to rebuild this country. And multiple conservative voters trump one progressive voter
Malthus and Mao were sick f*cks.
Welcome to comunist China, comrades! Realist, if you’re serious, find another country to live in instead of trying to screw up ours. If you’re being sarcastic, then my filter missed it, and I apologize.
Faces with a massive shortage of women, China has dropped its one child policy. In Chinese culture, the son is responsible for taking care of his parents when they become aged and infirm. Therefore, since there could be only one heir, parents afraid of being abandoned when old engaged in abortions and infanticide to assure themselves of a male heir. In atypical population, there are 55-60 percent females; in China it is reversed, and millions of men cannot find mates. this has led to an increase in “social” issues.
Because in Chinese culture girl children are essentially worthless. If you only get one it had better be a boy, which is why you have girl toddlers wandering into streets and getting hit by trucks with nobody stopping.
I call BS on this article from New Orleans. The youngster’s mother is wrong about cops doing what they had to do. Cops are the problem. If we didn’t have cops we would have no cop-killings of innocent black people. If we didn’t have cops, we wouldn’t have any people trying to kill cops. If we didn’t have cops, communities would learn to trust each other, and stop taking out their anger toward cops on each other. In fact, law is also the problem. If we didn’t have laws, we would have no criminals ! Without cops and laws, people would naturally learn to live peacefully with each other. Hands Up ! Don’t Shoot !
Whut? You need a sarc tag Sam. This woman quoted deserves no credit. I knew where my teen sons were-and they weren’t on a crime spree. Don’t have 11 kids if you’re going to suck as a parent. My brother has 10 and they all turned out well.
🙂
But the logic was solid, right?
The sad thing is we have folk right here on TTAG that believe that spiel just as you put it down, Sam.
Sam usually has good comments, however I’m struggling to understand that post, I hope it was sarcasm.
Would someone post a rant favoring having no laws, and be serious?
Yeesh, you got that JWM. I think(?) many of them are trolls, but sometimes the mask slips…
Sam, congratulations, on your own you just solved the problem of violent crime in the world. Go put yourself in for an obama peace prize, you earned it.
Finally. After years of living in quiet desperation, toiling away in complete anonymity….
“Those who reject responsibility for their own communities are pushing for young black men to reject civilization and choose the path of the streets. The black urban culture has to embrace responsibility and the idea that bad choices produce bad ends.”
Having lived in some pretty bad neighborhoods in my life I can tell you that most of the older black people who live there hate this “street” crap. The truth is that they’re terrified of the gangs. The gangbangers don’t care about anything. If they think you ratted on them they’ll kill you or at least give it the old college try. Hell, I had a neighbor who answered his door and got shot twice in the chest with a .22 because the dumbass gangsters couldn’t read address numbers and were looking for the guy across the street. They couldn’t read triple digit numbers correctly and he ended up spending weeks in the hospital for their idiocy. They weren’t even looking for a white guy but they were going to shoot whoever answered the door. No fucks given. Shooting the wrong guy just increases the gang’s fear factor and therefore their power over the neighborhood.
Got kids? Well then you’re pretty well screwed. Sure you can try to raise them right but once the gangs get to them you’re completely screwed. You screw with the gangs to try to keep your kid out of them and the gangsters will get your kid in retaliation. At school, on the way to or from etc. When you live in the projects you can’t afford the type of medical bills a gangbanger beat down will incur and these guys might just shoot up your house instead of kicking your kid’s ass. Sit down, shut the fuck up and hope your kid gets through this. Don’t rock the boat. These guys might shoot up your house or beat the crap out of your kids or even shoot one of your kids for no reason, you really think most people who know this are willing to give them a reason?
People say that rap music is the problem to which I say it depends on what rap music you’re listening to. The problems of bad neighborhoods and “the streets” were summed up pretty well by the track Bang Bang by Dr. Dre back damn near 20 years ago now. Tupac and Biggie talked about this sort of thing back in the 90’s too. Since then the problems have gotten worse.
The root of the problem isn’t black people or black culture. It’s the money that comes from selling illicit narcotics or pimping. These things are black market so you can’t run to the cops when someone rips you off. Instead you find them and dead their ass. That kind of fast living and dying young leads to a fatalistic mentality. Combine that with the fact that gangs rule by fear and the guys who run shit are the ones with the craziest “soldiers” because the level of stupid violence they perpetrate creates the fear that gives the gang power and you’ve got a serious problem.
The root of the problem isn’t black people or black culture.
Yeah right.
70+% of black families have no fathers.
That percentage was in the 20’s in the sixties.
How has the black community fared as the fatherless rate went from the 20’s to 70’s over the past 50 years?
Only a Leftist PC moron thinks that a fatherless family is something to praise and celebrate.
The answer to the problem is what has worked for the first 200 years of this county, families (fathers and mothers) and God.
“70+% of black families have no fathers.”
Thanks to the welfare state encouraging such behavior. You’ve effectively proved my point. Thanks.
As Thomas Sowell pointed out: The welfare state has done what slavery and Jim Crow could not; destroy the black family unit.
Fatherlessness isn’t an inherently “black” thing. It’s a logical response to an incentive, in this case a system that gives and incentive to have children in large numbers out of wedlock or even out of an unmarried but monogamous union. Having a father in the house cuts the amount of money you get while having more children increases it. If you want more money you have more kids and you make damn sure daddy doesn’t live under the same roof.
I knew a woman (white, if it matters) who refused to even consider the idea of getting married for this very reason. She didn’t have loads of kids (only one), but she certainly was not about to cut into her gov assistance money by getting married to anyone.
Black families without fathers is more a product of LBJ’s welfare state than black culture, but blacks are more likely than whites to accept being the government’s livestock in exchange for free food, housing etc.
Can we send this post abobe to the DNC, Barack and BLM?
The other good post I saw today was in the Daily Mail UK edition where 25 mass murders from Columbine to Orlando were examined and found that the perps were on either legal or illegal drugs.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3716454/PETER-HITCHENS-25-murders-massacres-one-common-link-DRUGS.html
Why isn’t this a part of the conversation?
Only more gun control is?
WE need to change that by use of the information in these two posts.
strych9,
And the answer to that problem situation is a LOT of armed people … like 1 in 4 adults being armed. Then, when a gangbanger decides to execute someone on a street corner for some perceived slight (or none at all since gangbangers do not apparently need a reason to kill someone), that gangbanger will be facing a hail of bullets from 1 in every 4 adults who was in the vicinity and saw the attempted/successful execution.
I really do not see any other solution.
“Hell, I had a neighbor who answered his door and got shot twice in the chest with a .22 because the dumbass gangsters couldn’t read address numbers and were looking for the guy across the street. They couldn’t read triple digit numbers correctly and he ended up spending weeks in the hospital for their idiocy. They weren’t even looking for a white guy but they were going to shoot whoever answered the door. No fucks given. Shooting the wrong guy just increases the gang’s fear factor and therefore their power over the neighborhood.”
So what you’re saying is they could get jobs with SWAT…
Well, at the very least, THIS guy was not another “Dindu Nuffin”. Mom recognized him by name………….
I’m usually on board with DW, his writing and commentary however, I’m torn between two observations… a race condoning the murder of cops in Dallas & Baton Rouge and cities who cash flow rest on lockup of blacks. Some communities report 50-60 percent of the black population arrested and processed in city or county jails. How is that possible…either black communities can barely rise above their condition leaning towards crime closing in on a breaking point, or there is a systematic over policing of black communities. That said…no gun is going to fix this.
DW’s comment “Only then can the black urban culture start the long climb to reach the same level of peaceful existence that most of the rest of America enjoys. It will not be easy, but it can be done”.
Only two courses are available…swarm high crime areas with police (and National Guard) absorbing the cost (Billions) associated with its long term implementation. Or let the black race & culture decline by its own choosing. 1.5 million black men are missing…dead or incarcerated. Ratio of black boys & girls are equal until the teenage years, when the split occurs. The numbers are staggering. And what black women have to go through is mind boggling. Can she secure a good black man? Since the pool of black men is cut in half, there’s no need for a black man to focus on one woman and raise a family when the ratio is 2 to 1.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/20/upshot/missing-black-men.html?_r=0
Government can only manage murders in the black community, it cannot undo the 50 years of damage its done trying to help them. Given the numbers, the best course of action is for a black woman to find an “other than black man” and hope his character can insure her and her children’s survival.
It’s not about the gun…the tool only bares witness and perhaps delay the demise of a race that is uniquely intertwine with this country’s history.
A black working professional male must have to beat the black women off with a stick.
Once again this is the fault of the NRA and OFWG gun owners in rural areas who cling to their guns and bibles.
I just wish some other groups in America would cling to their guns and bibles and maybe start using both.
“You got a momma and a dad. That’s one blessing right there. We work, we come home. We work, we come home and we take care of them.”
If that’s true, then what chance do YBMs have when they don’t have two working parents and the gangs are there to be their surrogate family?
1: 11 children and not one father around?
I think the root of the problem here is pretty clear.
Ben Carson’s mom raised him as a single parent (and many others like them) so we know it *can* be done.
The odds of that result, however, are daunting.
The parents can make a solid effort to provide a stable home life, as they did there. For that I *applaud* them.
The problem is the territory between the home and school and then back home again…
11 kids and no father?
Did you read the same article that I read?
It may be a problem for most of the good boy’s friends, and he might have chosen to follow their bad choices instead of following his own upbringing (same as at least one of his brothers did), but it doesn’t sound like his parents are the problem here.
“You got a momma and a dad. That’s one blessing right there. We work, we come home. We work, we come home and we take care of them. We just took them Sunday to Gulfport, to the Gulf Island Water Park.”
“He really wasn’t a bad boy…”
“criminal record, which, starting at the age of 10, includes shoplifting, distribution of drugs, trespassing, and attempted armed robbery . . .”
Momma needs to wake up and smell the bad boy she raised. He didn’t put himself in harm’s way. He WAS the harm.
Eleven kids despite free birth control in any form she wanted it. Personal responsibility is beyond her comprehension.
The death of the two patent family in the black community is the source of much of these pathologies. So who killed the black two patent family? Liberals and their welfare policies.
Books to check out: The Tradegy of American Compassion and The War on Cops.
+1
Add to the fact that plan parenthood systematically focuses on black abortions, I’ll predict Black communities will disolve withing 50 years. Good thing the Democrats are back filling their ranks with illegals.
The police are not the problem, but nor can they be the solution. Just a band-aid. A necessary one, but it’s not good enough.
But if these communities could figure out whether they want police to do everything or nothing it might help move on towards real issues.
I will now speak heresy. If you are sensitive or find reality offensive, please turn away.
The delusion of cognitive equality between the races is just that, a delusion. Races differ markedly in cognition, including in mean IQ, impulsiveness, aggressiveness, extraversion, and time horizons. Blacks are simply much more aggressive and impulsive than whites or yellows, and have substantially lower mean IQ (yes, whites are more aggressive and impulsive than yellows, and have lower mean IQ, though the gaps are much smaller between these two races than between either group and blacks).
Ergo, policing is not going to make a substantial dent in black crime rates.
I suppose the best evidence for this is sub-Saharan Africa, or other places with overwhelmingly black populations, which tend to look more like Detroit than Portland.
Sorry if this destroys your faith in the American dream of total self-authorship, I’m sure grief counseling is available in your area.
Addendum: obviously locking up the worst of the black population for long stretches will bring the crime rates down, but once that is an established thing, we see diminishing returns; the inherent differences between the races in criminality will still be there, and the “crime gap” will persist. Especially in the face of race-blind policy, which will have increasing numbers of white criminals locked up right alongside blacks, thus preserving the gap.