When Mayor Chuck Reed and his City Council allies created the Public Intoxication Task Force back in October, they put its members on a tight leash. The Task Force, created in response to community members outraged over the large number of Latinos arrested for being drunk in public, predictably demanded full access to arrest reports, as well as a greater scope and extended timeline so they could get down to the bottom of this issue. Members of the group soon began to feel stonewalled by city leaders—and let them know it. In response, Reed and the council turned around and teamed up with an academic consortium to analyze arrest data and police tactics, which, they say, will help determine whether racial profiling is happening. Some feel this makes the Task Force seem more like a PR tool than a stakeholder group with a mission. Even worse, they are learning that Police Chief Rob Davis knew about this potential consortium long before the Task Force was even created. Skyler Porras, director of the ACLU- Northern California, says Task Force members are plotting the next steps. “We are operating with an increased level of distrust,,” Porras says. “At this point there is significant concern that the city is not acting in good faith.”
San Jose Inside
San Jose Inside (https://www.sanjoseinside.com)
Will either of these “Task Forces” have the courage to see if alcoholism is a contributing factor in the Hispanic community? Probably not, too politically incorrect to bring up.
Steve, you’re ignorant.
But it is upsetting that Mayor Reed is supposed to be the Mayor of “transparency”, yet it is politics as usual.
2 – Could you expand on your incomplete statement? Is the question not a legitimate one? If not, why not?
Steve (#1),
Take heed of post #2, he’s an expert on ignorance.
As for your question, the National Institute of Health documents a number of studies that show that Hispanic men are more prone to “binge” than are blacks or whites, and Mexican-American men binge more than all other Hispanics.
Maybe that’s why the first Spanish I learned as a child was, “muy barracho.”
Here’s an excerpt from the NIH:
Early research reviewed by Caetano (1983) and Neff (1986)
indicated that Hispanic-American men appeared to drink
less frequently but in higher quantities than non-Hispanic
white and African-American men, a pattern sometimes
referred to as binge, or “fiesta,” drinking (table 1). Data from
the 1982–1984 Hispanic Health and Nutrition Examination
Survey (HHANES), which included Mexican-Americans
in the Southwest, Puerto Ricans in the New York City area,
and Cuban-Americans in Dade County (Miami), Florida,
confirmed this pattern among Mexican-American and
Puerto Rican males, but not among Cuban-Americans(Lee et al. 1997).
There seems to be a little apples/oranges discussion here. Alcoholism and binge drinking are different aspects of the same issue.
There is a considerable difference between being liquored up and obnoxious—which happens a lot when testosterone is added to the mix—and fitting the legal definition of drunk in public, which is that you must be so drunk that you present an immediate danger to yourself or others. That’s WAY different from being too drunk to drive and obnoxious
It might be more appropriate to arrest the drunken revelers for disturbing the peace, or simple assault than for being drunk in public. But those arrests probably require a full report so the D.A. can evaluate whether to charge or not. Or, the cops may just be taking the easy way out.
But this task force needs to evaluate this issue on the facts, not on whether the number of arrests coincides with a particular group’s representation in the population. If there are a lot of drunk folks downtown, that could explain why a lot of people get arrested.
Unless someone has hard evidence (not just the anecdotal stories we hear from the arrestees, all of whom will proclaim their innocence) that drunk Mexicans are being arrested and drunk white boys are not being arrested, then all this racial profling hoopla is nonsense.
As to attitude arrests, I’d bet there are some. Some idiots just don’t realize that you may be able to sass back your parents, teachers, etc., but it ain’t too bright to sass back a cop with a gun. There are a lot of folks partying at night carrying way to much attitude, which is often why they get stopped in the first place. You get in the cop’s face, and you pretty much deserve what you get as a response.
If you have a problem with the cop or your arrest, don’t make it worse by getting in his face. Let the judge sort it out.
so i suspect the usual people are on this task force as with the city’s countless other “task forces”
won’t name any, i’m sure you can figure that out. i don’t recall any outreach in terms of members and what not…oh well!
I know the anti-PC brigade likes to thump their chest and rile up others, but perhaps you should think about what alcoholism is. People who go out with friends to drink socially on the weekends are not the typical image of alcoholism, are they? If folks are drinking alone in their basements on a Tuesday at 11AM, then there might be more cause for worry. That’s not to say a dependency cannot manifest itself in the ways you describe, but I don’t see it as being particularly likely for most people.
Steve, you seem to assume that minority communities are incapable or unwilling to root out problems within. Have we never seen Latino activists working in their own community to steer kids from gang activity? Nobody had to boldly step out and risk being politically incorrect by saying that it was an issue more relevant to one racial group in San Jose.
#7 states, “Steve, you seem to assume that minority communities are incapable or unwilling to root out problems within.”
Where in the world did I ever write that? All I have stated is that for any task force to have a valid conclusion they must be willing to look at all the possibilities surrounding the problem they are studying. This includes asking the question is alcoholism or binge drinking higher or lower in the Hispanic community. The task force is useless if they need to be politically correct and afraid to answer this honestly at the risk of offending the Hispanic community. The safe choice, including by the city administration, is to make the police department the scapegoats and form yet another task force to put the blame somewhere else.
“Where in the world did I ever write that?”
Well…
“Probably not, too politically incorrect to bring up.”
Why does it have to be explicitly stated (presumably by you) in order for the issue to be addressed?
#11,
If you want to read so far into something I wrote to come to extrapolate such a far fetched and ridiculous conclusion, you win. Much as I am sure whatever task force is formed won’t examine the entire issue so they don’t have to deal with the community backlash and once again we will make the cops the scapegoats.
Steve, I’m not trying to crucify you. I misinterpreted what you said and voiced my reaction to it. Your adherence strictly to one side of this conflict is not best for finding resolution, though.
Apparently Steve was right that it’s not ok to discuss it. Just bring up the idea, and you get called ignorant. I was expecting someone to call him racist, but maybe that’s next.
#2,
Sorry to see you need to resort to name calling and insulsts. It is ignorant to not be willing to look at all aspects of this situation before coming to a conclusion. This includes the possiblity that there is a higher level of alcoholism in the Hispanic community. Whatever task force looks at this issue needs to be brutally honest regarding alcoholism in certain communities contributing to higher levels of arrest.
Simple observation: Painfully missing from this site is ANY mention of the OPD officers gunned down by parolee rapist and murderer Lovelle Mixon. I know Tom McEnery’s position without having to see his comment on this site. Are the rest of the staff columnists showing their true colors? I do not know but the silence is deafening…
#14 Reality,
Very well said. The silence is deafening. Not one of the columnists here bothered to offer their condolences to the officer’s families. Sickening.
#14,
“I know Tom McEnery’s position without having to see his comment on this site. Are the rest of the staff columnists showing their true colors? I do not know but the silence is deafening”
That would be the difference between SJI as we know it, and what it is today~
Quote by Robert Fisk
“American journalists go for safe stories. They don’t like controversy. They don’t like to say, ‘I was a witness. I saw this. This is true. This is what happened.” You have this constant business where journalists can never be the source; there has to be this anonymous diplomat.”
http://en.thinkexist.com/search/searchQuotation.asp?search=anonymous