|
|
Post by kmc on Dec 21, 2006 9:44:14 GMT -5
DED, it's your fault that RocDoc is a racist.
|
|
|
|
Post by skvorisdeadsorta on Dec 21, 2006 10:07:37 GMT -5
El Paso is a very safe city? Do you live in El Paso, South Dakota Ken or what?!!!!?
|
|
|
|
Post by strat-0 on Dec 21, 2006 10:13:09 GMT -5
Even Strat-o's raggin' me? Yoiks!  |
|
|
|
Post by Kensterberg on Dec 21, 2006 10:24:39 GMT -5
El Paso is a very safe city? Do you live in El Paso, South Dakota Ken or what?!!!!? Yep, we're a safe city, Skvor. Safer than Austin, by the numbers. And I believe it. There used to be a big car theft problem here in the eighties and early nineties, but even that's almost gone now. What crime we do have consists primarily of drugs coming through (this is one of the biggest drug importation corridors into the US) and family violence. If you're not related to anyone here and not involved in moving drugs, this really is a safe place. And even within the drug trade, the shootings and what not are kept on the other side of the river. Really, we just have routine pot busts that would make headlines in other parts of the country. Getting caught with 100 pounds of pot here is really no big deal -- that typically will get you a couple of years of probation, and absolutely no mention in the local paper. Nobody notices pot busts until it's into tons. And cocaine busts go unnoticed until you're into hundreds of pounds. For a metro area of better than 700,000 we only have around thirty murders a year -- that's an insanely low rate. Any kind of violent crime gets huge headlines here, b/c it's just so rare. Yeah, in every significant measure, El Paso is a very safe city. Juarez, on the other hand, is a whole different kettle of fish. |
|
|
|
Post by skvorisdeadsorta on Dec 21, 2006 10:37:11 GMT -5
Man, I remember playing in El Paso and 2 dudes held up our Van on I-10 in the early part of this decade. One of the scarier moments of my life. It's come a long way, then, which is pretty great.
Austin is probably one of the safest places to live and it's nice.
|
|
|
|
Post by Kensterberg on Dec 21, 2006 10:43:54 GMT -5
Oh yeah, back in the eighties there were parts of town that I wouldn't want to go near. And if you broke down on I-10 you were definitely at risk. Hell, in the early nineties there were friggin' banditos on the border highway! (Note: I'm not being insensitive here. The press reported them as banditos and that was the term that everyone was using, Hispanic or Anglo, Mexican, Texan or New Mexican. These guys were stopping traffic on this major road near the border of the three states and robbing people at gunpoint. It was insane! The police were telling people to stay away from this major road after dark).
We've come a long way at this point. But even back then, there was a very low rate of violent crime -- it was almost all theft related crimes back in the day.
|
|
|
|
Post by maarts on Dec 21, 2006 14:39:00 GMT -5
Reading the posts in this dispute here I'm just struck by the irony- Bilinguals sometimes have the disadvantage to have certain words in their vocabulary that in their native tongue or in connotation to them doesn't have the same negativity as for other users of the same word (zum Beispiel: 'douche' in Holland is a shower).
'Hordes' is a word my grandma used quite a bit to say 'lots'. She didn't say it to indicate tribes or lots of people in a slightly derogatory way, but in the Amsterdam/Rotterdam-area it was a slang-word meaning tons, loads, oodles of people. A 'horde' in Dutch also means a hurdle. I've heard it being used in daily language regularly, not only Amsterdammer but also the Jewish community and northerners seem to have this in their lingo.
So when RocDoc uses the word I don't see the negativity. I only see the negativity in baiting him out, knowing that he will respond vociferously and by debating the use of one word go past the whole discussion.
Bilingualism? I think we all still have a lot to learn about each other.
Happy Christmas.
|
|
|
|
Post by Fuzznuts on Dec 21, 2006 14:45:14 GMT -5
Merry Christmas, Maarts. Hug your mom for me.
|
|
|
|
Post by rockysigman on Dec 21, 2006 14:47:17 GMT -5
The word "hordes" had very little to do with why I, personally, saw his statements as racist, maarts. But yeah, I understand what you're saying.
|
|
|
|
Post by Kensterberg on Dec 21, 2006 14:52:05 GMT -5
Merry Christmas, maarts! Hope it's a great one.  |
|
|
|
Post by phil on Dec 21, 2006 14:52:41 GMT -5
Or ...
Navidad feliz ...
Joyeux Noël ...
幸せなクリスマス ...
Glückliches Weihnachten ...
Vrolijk Kerstfeest en een Gelukkig Nieuwjaar et bon voyage !!
|
|
|
|
Post by Mary on Dec 21, 2006 14:58:44 GMT -5
Ken it's interesting what you said about all the crime associated with the drug trade being concentrated in Juarez. The cynical side of me wonders if perhaps the reason for El Paso's low crime rate is just becuase its ghetto happens to be in a different country.
|
|
|
|
Post by rockysigman on Dec 21, 2006 15:02:13 GMT -5
Happy Hannukah everybody!
(And by everybody...I guess I mean Mary).
|
|
|
|
Post by Galactus on Dec 21, 2006 15:03:29 GMT -5
I deleted my post, because I don't really want to get into it again.
Happy Christmas Holidays
|
|
|
|
Post by Kensterberg on Dec 21, 2006 15:04:08 GMT -5
Ken it's interesting what you said about all the crime associated with the drug trade being concentrated in Juarez. The cynical side of me wonders if perhaps the reason for El Paso's low crime rate is just becuase its ghetto happens to be in a different country. It's a little more complicated than that. But that is one of the things that makes this community so interesting to look at: we are the largest border population on the world. Nowhere else does an international border have this many people in such a concentrated area. People talk about San Diego and Tijuana, but those two are actually separated by about thirty miles, and culturally aren't that close at all. The other Tex-Mex twins further down the Rio Grande are all significantly smaller than El Paso/Juarez. (Plus, we've got Las Cruces, NM, which is around another 100,000 only about 40 miles up the road -- interestingly, they've got a much higher violent crime rate than El Paso). But even if you factored in a certain degree of drug related violence into the picture, we still wind up with significantly lower rates of violent crime than would be expected given the city's demographics. I'm gonna pose this question to some CJ folks I know at UTEP next time I see 'em, see if they can give me some insight to share with you. |
|
