how do you take your crime, organized or not?
it seems to me that most of us in the west live in a very individualistic world. we're a large family of invidividuals, in other words. with our lemming-like dependance on legislation to tell us what to do, and a "catch me if you can" sense of right or wrong, we are seldom using our morals to guide us as to what we should and should not be doing.
most of us commit crimes very very regularly, be it littering, speeding, satellite tv piracy, song piracy, and so on. i don't have the engery to expound on why this is, or why it is so indicative of a greater wrong. the whole 'we're not living life in the best way possible for us as a species' thang is for another day, or rather another pint.
the issue i'm trying to jot down here for my own reference later has to do with what i refer to as dangerous crime. a year or so ago, the police triumphed over the italian mafia in montreal. the long version involves rats in new york from about 10 years ago starting a little snowball a-rolling. i remember wondering aloud as to how wise the government thought this action to be. crime is a constant that is NEVER going to be removed from a given community until we start addressing the macro points i refered to above. with this in mind, would you prefer the drugs in your city being controlled by 3 families, only dealt out of approved and supervised locations and distributed by accountable blue collar types. apart from extremely isolated areas, street pushers just simply weren't permitted to exist, gangs were essentially extinct as well, apart from a couple of necessary-evil types in 3 well known neighborhoods. loan-sharking, protection-rackets, prostitution and so forth was all managed as well.
i recall lamenting the mafia arrests, and having a friend of mine tsk tsk me and have at me with italian-mafia-supporter finger pointing. i responded truthfully. i abhor opportunists (again, in line with the big point earlier), and feel that the talent and intelligence required to stay out of jail and alive in the mob would also effectively guarantee you success in the "legitimate" world nowadays. this ain't the 50's anymore. italians are, despite the pur-laine troglodytes' opinions, now the equals of other quebecers, with the same opportunities and lack of discrimination. mostly.
the reason i was disappointed with the not-surprisingly short sighted action from the quebec law folk is as follows: the vacuum created by the arrest of many upper-management types created immediate infighting and jockeying for position from those that were left. my fears were justified when i started hearing more and more on the various news feeds about an appreciable increase in petty violent crime and gang-related murders. for Christ's sake, the Crips are fucking recruiting in NDG now.
you wanted toronto? well, keep it up and you'll get toronto. we used to have cops with revolvers who would go their entire career without firing them. the mafia would provide them the occasional bone to appease the press, and they went about their merry way. now they're in body armour (the cops) and only patrol certain parks and streets in groups.
i hear tell this may get better due to the interest of some other folk, but we really should stop and think for a minute. or rather for a decade or two. stop and think.
