A railroad that runs through a certain community in Chicago has been plagued with thefts of trucks and items out of railroad cars.
So the railroad police and the actual police conducted a “sting” operation and caught some thieves.
But they’re the ones in hot water.
Turns out that if you park goods in a low-income neighborhood, of course they’re going to get stolen, and the owners have no right to complain or do anything about it.
That’s either entrapment or racist … probably both. Just as a liberal. 
When my cat Buttons wants my attention he likes to touch the tips of his teeth to my skin. Sharp pointy little teeth. It tickles actually. Now suppose I’m wanting to do something else right then … am I to blame for the tickling because I put my feet where he can reach them?
Now, the People in question are not like cats, there isn’t some inescapable nature of being a “black person”. There isn’t something “black” about what is happening in Chicago … simply, the color of a Person’s skin tells you nothing of importance about who they are, what they believe, or the sort of character they have. People don’t inherit suffering or guilt. And there isn’t anything about just being poor that makes crime so bad or else when Americans were really poor it would have been a war zone everywhere … even in that same community among people who are equally poor and of similar ages you will certainly find individuals who wouldn’t steal bubble gum.
The fault is not in the stars of those who see no issues engaging in petty crimes (let’s leave out serious crimes) but in themselves.
All across the land you’ll find people of all stripes who are as honest as the day is long just as you’ll find individuals whose choices and excuses has helped them grow into anything but … there are even honest lawyers … or so I’m occasionally reminded (must vary inversely from the distance to the nearest Capitol building though).
So what is wrong?
Philosophy. Ideology. These seem likely contributors.
It seems to me that all the real opposition of society that blacks had faced never did enough to make even the criminal element, present in all groups, particularly different than any other criminal element of any other demographic bunch you might care to name.
But borrowing from Scripture what might be called a root of bitterness took hold and combined with Left wing notions of power and class struggles created a sort of radical that once joined with the criminal element just made for something worse than either on it’s own and that the transition point seems to have been about the time a relatively small number of angry black people first burned down their own communities (decades after the last time some angry white mob outright burned down a black community).
For the most part criminals of all demographics seem to do their thing close to home. They prey upon their neighbors. What happens in a place like Chicago is on that level no different than what happens in Dallas or Abilene. But there has to be some special sort of hopelessness that takes hold once your neighbors seem willing to proverbially (if not literally) burn down your neighborhood, their neighborhood. How do you plan for a better tomorrow if that’s ever gone on?
And I think that’s what really separates a proverbial Chicago out. It isn’t that there’s an astonishing lot of criminals about (as one Detroit cop was to have said, virtually all crime is due to just a few thousand individuals out of hundreds of thousands) but that there’s a mailiase, a resignment and heartbreak too among all the honest folks.
They don’t even have to share one jot in whatever ideological poisons that may grip the criminals and many likely don’t. Their kids are being lured into often shortened lives of crime on the streets by the same gangs that seek to poison and rob the rest. How could heartbreak not be part of it? So everything falls apart and it just keeps on falling apart.
But, hey, to pull a Mr. Mackey: “Liburals are bad. Mmm-Kay? And white liburals are really bad. Mmm-Kay?” since that’s so much easier a rhetoric.
I am not sure how the law on entrapment works. I remember watching a show awhile back where police were dressed like civilians and selling marijuana to people, as soon as aomeone bought it they ran him down and arrested them.
I would have thought that would have been entrapment but they were doing it time after time. Maybe someone on here with a law background could educate us on this 
Entrapment involves coersion of someone to committ a crime. So it would depend on what the cops said and did while selling the weed. If they were just standing around and a suspect came up and asked them if they had any, that’s not entrapment. If they were trying to get people to buy it, that is.
Entrapment involves luring someone to commit a crime they wouldn’t normally commit, that is the clincher.
Yep
10 char
Thanks for the clarity, I don’t think they were trying to get people to buy but they were walking a fine line. Kind of like the vice girls posing as prostitutes, even going on hotel rooms with people and then the moment they pay they get arrested. That seems close to entrapment because they are definitely trying to get people to pay for sex.
Sorry can’t agree.
If someone between 21 & 59 doesn’t know not to cut the seal on a locked railroad car & not remove its contents, it isn’t any law or official whose at fault.
So the thieves who cut the seal on that car had no priors?
Somehow I doubt that.
Who said that? Using the description I gave and the circumstances this probably wasn’t entrapment.
“Luring someone to commit a crime they wouldn’t normally commit”
Applying it to the intentional breaking into a locked car that took place in Illinois, somehow I don’t think anyone who could break the seal & raid its contents wouldn’t normally commit such a crime.
Especially since many residents in this part of IL are earning under $25,000 per year & can’t afford their basic necessities, somehow I don’t see them as immune to theft.
I just said I don’t think it was entrapment based on the description of entrapment I gave, which I gleaned from and actual court case some time ago.
I was not “applying” it to anything, it was meant to be informative.
Title is a bit misleading “What’s wrong with the black community?”
This is only a segment of black people in Illinois, specifically a segment between 21 & 59 earning less than 25K per annum & apparently, according to the article, “unable to afford their basic necessities.”
I’d be curious, though. If they were unable to afford even a cheap pair of sneakers at Walmart, what was on their feet when they raided that car full of shoes?
As for problems of that community, one poster pointed out poverty is nothing new. What is relatively new, though, is having children without dad in the home—the culture of ‘baby mommy’ and ‘baby daddy’, dad fathering many children he isn’t going to raise—being made fashionable or at least not to be judged.
African descended immigrants from Africa & the Caribbean tend to be better educated & are more likely to be married, making their children less vulnerable to this level of poverty. Once the ‘baby mommy’ and ‘baby daddy’ culture is condemned for the low level trash it is, maybe children will be born into more favorable circumstances & less likely to fall into groups with others engaged in these behaviors.
It’s a trap, sure, but cannot be considered entrapment. If a guy is out looking for a prostitute and picks the wrong one, that’s not entrapment.
Similar to this Chicago case. The bait is out. If you’re a thief you’ll bite.
I didn’t opine on that case, just the one where undercover cops were selling weed. On that case of the shoes, I agree with you.
I wonder with weed being legal now—at least in some states—would police even try to entrap anyone by selling it to ‘em. If they did, would it be considered entrapment if someone without priors took ‘em up on it?
In states where it isn’t, might someone taking ‘em up on it use a medicinal defense, as in I have a problem that isn’t responding to anything else?
There is more room for grey areas with weed than intentionally breaking into a railroad car full of shoes. Shame on various individuals claiming this company was trying to entice only certain individuals when they were trying to catch & prosecute thieves!
That’s a good point. The brand of sneakers one wears seems to be a status symbol in some urban societies. Kids have been killed for their sneakers.
