Charlotte Bags Victim Number 105 Opinion

On Monday Charlotte's homicide rate hit 105, and while the numbers are debated (is it 103,104 or 105)* and Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles promises to address the issue after the first of the year, the bodies keep hitting the floor.

The reason for her honor's silence is clear.

The African American community has (largely) become a culture of violence embracing criminality and gun play.

Physical violence is endemic in the African American Community and is seen as a solution to everyday problems. CMPD Chief Kerr Putney: Shooting someone over "twenty dollars, a burger from a fast food place, somebody said something to your girlfriend and small amounts of marijuana. People are dying over things that really aren't that big of a deal." 

Chief Putney doesn't say "black people" but his message is pretty clear he's disgusted with what is happening.

11 year old Romello Wilcox is an example of how bad it has become and how it now transcends generations. A simple dispute escalated into physical violence without any regard for the outcome, and now a young boy is dead and two unnamed juveniles, a girl age 12 and a boy age 11 are charged in Romello's death. (*Romello Wilcox is 104 by Cedar's count)

The shooting death of Scott Brooks, which is still under investigation will most likely end with two young black men being charged and the finding that their take was all of twenty dollars.

Call it racism if you want but it would be smarter to admit there’s a problem when nearly 90% percent of victims and assailants in Charlotte’s record number of homicides are African American.

This is not new, Billy Roberts penned the Jimmy Hendrix song "Hey Joe" in the 1960's Greenwich Village based on a fictional conversation between two men, but a situation he was aware of in nearby Harlem on more than one occasion. The song often seen to glorify violence to settle problems. In this case an unfaithful wife the solution "gun her down".

Until we can figure out a way to change this demographic, we need to incarcerate violent offenders and get them off the streets. If you use a gun during the commission of a crime that's it "game over" no second chances. 

This is a basic responsibility of civil society, this is why we live in cities with rules and laws and ordinances. If the city of Charlotte can't provide this basic service we need to replace the incompetence until it does.

Liberals will challenge the numbers and the suggestion that incarceration works, and will add that the US has the largest prison population in the world, citing lower prisoner counts in China and Russia.  

The reason of course China and Russia have low prison populations is they simply execute the violent offenders. And that works for me.