No Tears For WMDs

I have no tears for those I term, WMDs, "Weapons of Municipal Destruction." New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu shed symbolic ones in local media over a 21 year old armed robbery suspect killed by police Tuesday after robbing a supermarket. The mayor even said, "As a city and as a community, we have to do a better job of helping these young guys turn away from the bad decisions that they make."

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This seems to blame others for callous choices made by the deceased. Such deflection, seen recently in besieged Baltimore, creates a cult of blamelessness which increases-not decreases-violent crime. Low income males aren't exempted from punishment for wrongdoing. No amount of excuse making from on high changes this fact. Weaponized youth rudely, sometimes fatally, traverse society as if none can stop them. The fact that officials and spokespeople refuse to put them in their place sets the stage for avoidable tragedy. I look at the mayors of battle scarred New Orleans and Baltimore and wonder are they scared or perhaps secretly consider inner city crime a corrupted civil right? Whatever these politicians' motivation, I can't shed tears for weapons of municipal destruction (WMDs). WMDs destroyed my neighborhood and culture and along with it, any hope of sympathy.

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