[stevew]

here.

WOMAN: I come home from work, I can't even get up my front steps 'cause they occupied by the drug dealers. Is that in the picture you got up there?

POLICE MAJOR COLVIN: I'm Major Colvin. I apologize for giving you the wrong impression tonight, we mean no disrespect. I know what's going on in your neighborhoods, I see it everyday. Ma'am, it pains me that you cannot enter your own front door in safety and with dignity. But truth is, I can't promise you it's gonna get any better. We can't lock up the thousands that are out on those corners. There'd be no place to put them even if we could. We show you charts and statistics like they mean something, but you going back to your home tonight, we gonna be in our patrol cars, and the boys still gonna be out there on them corners. Deep in the game. This here is the world we've got, people. And it's about time that all of us had the good sense to at least admit that much.

MAN: So what's the answer?

POLICE MAJOR COLVIN: I'm not sure. But whatever it is, it can't be a lie.

[...]

BILL MOYERS: But it still is a lie, isn't it?

DAVID SIMON: And it always will be. I don't think we have the stomach to actually evaluate this. And--

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean?

DAVID SIMON: Well--

BILL MOYERS: We don't have the stomach?

DAVID SIMON: Again, we would have to ask ourselves a lot of hard questions. The people most affected by this are black and brown and poor. It's the abandoned inner cores of our urban areas. And we don't, as we said before, economically, we don't need those people. The American economy doesn't need them. So, as long as they stay in their ghettos, and they only kill each other, we're willing to pay a police presence to keep them out of our America. And to let them fight over scraps, which is what the drug war, effectively, is. I don't think-- since we basically have become a market-based culture and it's what we know, and it's what's led us to this sad d&eaccent;nouement, I think we're going to follow market-based logic, right to the bitter end.

BILL MOYERS: Which says?

DAVID SIMON: If you don't need 'em, why extend yourself? Why seriously assess what you're doing to your poorest and most vulnerable citizens? There's no profit to be had in doing anything other than marginalizing them and discarding them.

 

[sanjuro]

DAVID SIMON: Again, we would have to ask ourselves a lot of hard questions. The people most affected by this are black and brown and poor. It's the abandoned inner cores of our urban areas. And we don't, as we said before, economically, we don't need those people. The American economy doesn't need them. So, as long as they stay in their ghettos, and they only kill each other, we're willing to pay a police presence to keep them out of our America. And to let them fight over scraps, which is what the drug war, effectively, is. I don't think-- since we basically have become a market-based culture and it's what we know, and it's what's led us to this sad d&eaccent;nouement, I think we're going to follow market-based logic, right to the bitter end.

BILL MOYERS: Which says?

DAVID SIMON: If you don't need 'em, why extend yourself? Why seriously assess what you're doing to your poorest and most vulnerable citizens? There's no profit to be had in doing anything other than marginalizing them and discarding them.

What's the solution? Double the police force? National Guard patrols? Or maybe subsidies to drug dealers, like they give to farmers?

And also, let's not forget the other half of the equation: the stop snitchin' movement originated in Simon's backyard, Baltimore. Also, at some point, the end to the "Vicious Cycle" has to start with the families in the cycle.