Picture this, if you will. Someone commits a crime. Maybe they’re shot by police. Maybe they’re arrested for a laundry list of crimes against the people of Albany. It doesn’t really matter what. What it seems is inevitable is that at least one of their family members will hop on television and say “they are a good boy/girl”.
Frankly, failure to take responsibility is two-thirds of the blasted problem around here!
Take, for example, Don Buie. After bilking the taxpayers out of thousands of dollars, he left town only to eventually return to be arrested. The judge decided he was a flight risk and denied bond. Buie, however, has a more ardent defender than any attorney. He’s got his mom. She apparently told WALB that the theft charges were “blown out of proportion”. Really? Stealing and conspiring to steal thousands of dollars that were provided by taxpayers should be a crime?
I know he’s your son, but come on!
Frankly, my mother would probably have told WALB that if I was indeed guilty, she’d be whooping my butt before they cart me off to prison. She wouldn’t defend me by calling the charges blown out of proportion. Instead, she’d say that she didn’t raise me that way (she didn’t). Or else she wouldn’t talk to the press. It’s just that simple.
However, Buie wasn’t the only one defended by family, and he wasn’t even the first.
Every time a suspected criminal is shot, the family hops on television and talks about what a wonderful person the deceased is. They drone on about how they would never do anything like they’re accused of. Well, I hate to break it to them, but most of the time? Yeah…they actually did do it. Who’d have thunk it?
While family is rattling on about what a good boy so-and-so is, despite the pictures of him in gang colors and flashing gang signs for the camera or a host of other information to the contrary, the example has been set. Others in the community who know, for a fact actually, that so-and-so was actually a scumbag who probably deserved what happened to them.
Now, obviously, not every justified shooting is of a well known dirt bag. Sarah Riggins, who was only recently killed by police after taking a shot at officers, doesn’t seem to have a list pointing to her as a repeat offender. But she was shot and killed by police. The GBI has ruled that she fired first. And yet, I’ve heard family members question the official word.
You see, I’m a government skeptic. I’m as much of one as there is. However, I also understand that the GBI has looked into it. They’ve got no reason to stay it was a good shoot unless it was. And, let’s face it for a minute. With family members screaming “my loved one was a good boy/girl”, it gets pretty darn hard to listen anymore.
If they were a good boy or girl, then maybe they should have acted like it.
I always hate that the mothers are put in that position. The guilty person should shield their family.
I just wish we had gone with our gut feelings when the computer out the window situation happened. In the words of Barney Fife, this mess could have been nipped in the bud and everybody (including Buie) would have been better off. I don’t want to take the newspaper out of the box in the morning because tried of seeing folks that look like me on the front. The first rule of governing is not to get cute with the money but some of my friends think people were comfortable with these “arrangements” because a city official was saying it was straight. There is plenty blame to go around but some of these associates got bamboozled like the people who hired him.
My wife is a teacher. She started in Worth County, GA and is now in Marion County, FL. In both systems, she has had to break up fights, and when meeting with parents over the incident, they have tried the “it wasn’t my kid” defense. They have an immeasurable ammount of gall to tell my wife to her face that it was not their precious angel she pulled off of some other kid. That she is wrong, it wasn’t their kid. The most recent one here in Florida, the aggressor ruptured the other child’s eye, broke the orbital bone, crushed his nose, broke three ribs, caused a concussion, bruised a lung and caused swelling on the brain that required fluid to be drained. The reconstructive surgery bill is currently estimated at $1 million. The mom’s response after watching the video: That wasn’t him. Of course, she also tried to sue my wife and the school because she scratched his defenseless little cheek when she pulled him off of the other boy before a fight turned into a murder. Luckilly, the judges down here have their heads on straight because at the pretrial hearing, the judged reviewed the evidence and promptly threw out the suit. But the fact remains, this mom, despite absolutely incontrovertible evidence, said “it wasn’t him.” This is the society we live in. At least the judge ruled nobody can sue the woman who broke up the fight and saved the attacked child’s life.
Carlton Fletcher better writes in the paper today what I was trying to write yesterday about the Buie drama. If you are stinking up the place at work, you should feel an obligation to those who hired you and those involved in your professional and personal development (community, school, family, college, church) to leave before further sullying their reputations and respectability; and limiting future opportunities for others. I talked with Mr. Buie for 10 minutes at a Play Day adult game social gathering downtown. After wishing him well in his important tasks, I said, “you are a better man than me because we should have addressed this stuff in the 80s.” Pot, kettle, black: when I wasn’t as brilliant as I expected myself to be at work, I left while many people said “fake it until you make it.” “Many people” stay paid while doing substandard work but I better leave that alone.
It reminds of the Lynrd Skynrd song “I Know A Little” where the singers says “I know a little about love..baby, I can guess the rest.” Seems like “many people” follow that axiom at work but with crime, education, healthcare and jobs on the table guessing the rest won’t cut it. Some people approach marriage and parenthood with the same mentality and that is the root of the problems facing local, state, and federal officials. I was looking forward to an improved downtown Albany where grown folks could listen to some swinging old Honk like this then step across the street for some Mississippi blues. I ask Buie if downtown Albany would feel like a smaller version of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor or historic Savannah and he said yes. To me, he was a decent marketing guy; the finance part needed a better check and balance system.
http://www.jango.com/music/Lynyrd+Skynyrd?l=0
I know a Little
Lynyrd Skynyrd
Well, I don’t read that daily news
’cause it ain’t hard to figure why people gets the blues.
If they can’t dig what they can’t use,
if they’d stick to themselves they’d be much less abused.
Will…people have been struggling for years now to solve the “downtown Albany conundrum.” It has been a mighty struggle with way too much Sturm und Drang (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturm_und_Drang)– my Germanic Heritage…
As I sit here, I genuinely believe there are a few possible partial solutions. Difficult to achieve and sustain, but worth a shot. Sadly, it is very unlikely there can be an Albany-wide solution absent a mighty spiritual transformation coupled with at least a few economic successes pointing to the direction of a revival.
I am most amazed that Albany’s numbers and statistics and trends are ignored when considering revitalization concepts…as are the need to bring new revenues into the market and keep profits local. Right now, Albany is all about the numbers that are plain as day before us, and they are constantly ignored.
Sure, Forbes put the city among the 10 poorest cities, and we grab on to that soundbite. But how do we ignore the underlying statistics that have been there before Forbes taged them for us? Why do we need Forbes to tell us this? Shouldn’t we already know and be digging out of it with a very focused plan? Forbes just looked at stats that we have had.
Where have WE been? Why do we ignore basic market forces and the realities of basic statistics? Frankly, I did and made the leap of faith and it left me in a heap of trouble.
We need to get smarter very fast.
If my son did it, he will pay the price. If he is accused and did not do it, I will do anything to help him. The guilty must pay.
For those who yell the Police had no right to kill my love one, You need to work as a cop for thirty something years! You would see things a lot differtly.