Before anyone gets the notion that I’m hatin’ or “burnin’ bread” (that’s a street term for predicting that someone is about to get busted) on the mayor’s grandson, let me assure you that I’m not. I’ve never laid eyes on the young man, except on TV when he was getting arraigned in front of a judge for one of his misadventures.
But I’m streetwise enough to know who and what I’m looking at: this young dude is totally enmeshed in ghetto gangland and weed culture. Indeed, his stature as the grandson of the mayor affords him extra street creds — creds that he has to live up to by proving that he’s as tough (or tougher) than his contemporaries. Back in the day he would have long ago been shipped “down south” to stay with his Big Mamma for a couple of years until he grew out of his juvenile behavior. But those days are long gone.
What’s going to happen now is that the very able lawyers who were hired by his grandfather are going to play the legal system as if it were a six-string guitar. They’re going to move to suppress some evidence and get still other charges against this wanna be gangster thrown out. It won’t be that hard since we have a legal system that’s designed to give those caught with guns probation at worse, I guess so they can go back out on the street and next time kill someone.
One really has to wonder if this is the white establishment’s method of “thinning the herd” — letting these young black guns go back out on the street so they can kill each other off. Let’s be very clear here: when dudes are riding around with guns they don’t have a permit for, they’re protecting themselves against other dudes with guns, and eventually someone gets shot, and perhaps even killed.
Maya Angelou wrote, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
The mayor’s grandson has shown the whole world who he really is. But soft-headed and soft-hearted folks are going to make all kinds of excuses so they don’t have to believe him. At this point in his life the dude is a thug.
He didn’t just get that gun the day before he was caught with it. And the 17-year-old girl he let drive his truck (the one who got him in the trouble in the first place — they didn’t give her name due to her age, but I heard through the grapevine it’s “Hoe-retta”) took the joke way past Broadway when she spit at and tried to kick the cops who were arresting her. Real nice company Frank Jr. is keeping; she’s trying to get his ass killed.
If Frank Jackson wants the number of gun deaths to start going down in the city then, he should lead by example and drop his own grandson like he’s on fire — like he’s a bad habit. The dude has already proved that he doesn’t give a good goddamn about the mayor; otherwise he wouldn’t be acting out right at election time. If I’m Frank I’d drop kick his ass straight into the joint; the only thing that would beat him to the penitentiary would be the headlights on the bus.
In that way his administration could send out a clear signal to other would-be thugs: get caught packin’ a pistol in Cleveland and your ass is going to jail — THE VERY FIRST TIME YOU GET CAUGHT. I’m sick and tired of those arms-length liberals that live in safe suburbs and exurbs who defend the rights of young inner-city blacks to act like assholes and run around shooting each other.
Now most young blacks, no matter where they live, are simply attempting to learn how to navigate their way through this racist world without running afoul of the law; but those young blacks who want to illegally carry guns … we have to save them from themselves by shipping them off to where they can’t get a gun in their hand. This really isn’t all that complicated, folks.
And when they grow up and are ready to rejoin society as law-abiding citizens, we shouldn’t hold their past transgressions against them. We should welcome them home with open arms, and do whatever it takes to make them whole. But for that to happen, they have to stay alive long enough. These really are life and death issues, and should be treated as such.
From CoolCleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author at http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.