<nettime> "I always wanted to be a gangster"

["andacaci@dds.nl" <andacaci@dds.nl>]

"I ALWAYS WANTED TO BE A GANGSTER.....'cause  i can't trust the police"

As trust goes down by the minute the dutch government wonders why the
population in this country lacks to have trust in the policeforce in it's
today's form. Bad publicity maybe? 

Looking at a major city like Amsterdam we can count a handfull of reasins
why people do not feel comfort when thinking of the police. Offcourse you
have the squatters and punks that will propably never = trust a police
officer, but that's almost logical after all the riots and to keep it a
bit in this time the eurotop when people were literally being beat down by
infiltrants and cops standing face away of all the camera's coming from
the whole of europe. Sure their feelings are propably the same ones every
punk has in the whole world against the police. 

If we take a look in Amsterdam West there is a maybe bigger hate under a
lot of the people and especially youth living there. These are mostly
immigrant children with a problem: there is nothing to do in their
neightbourhood. If they want to hang out on a playground they scare (!)
the old people so the "friendly" neightbourhood watch called "Jerry" tells
them to take a hike. Off to another place to hang out that there isn't
anywhere located. A fight broke out a while back and the Mobile Unit took
some kids starting with an age from eleven and older. 

On the local and national news we could read about those kids being bad
and that the police did a fine job. So why did the all the people living
there go out on the streets to demonstrate against the way kids were beng
treated by the police? Hold ups when just talking and then cannot talk to
the news about that. 

But the police just send a press release while the youth over there cannot
do that. When the police tells how bad behaved the kids over there are
there will be some bad blood flowing. 

Another thing is that a huge amount of people living here feel unsave.
Older people feel afraid to walk over the street at night so they stay in
and feel isolated. Ask about it and hear that they are afraid because of
all those youngsters that form couples at night and walk the streets
togheter looking for some action. They start blaming the police because of
the simple reason that they watch to much television. Where do you see all
those black,scarry cripps and bloods and "gangsta wannabe's"..............
To whom do you start to compare the kids standing outside of your house
How may times do old peope actually get robbed at night. not much actually
almost all of those thoughts are really just all in the mind. 

In Amsterdam zuid-oost (yes, you guessed right south-east of Amsterdam)
there's alot of angry feelings against the police. People living here are
mostly former people that lived in the dutch colonies like Surinam. Also
other immigrants were put here when in the 1960's the dutch government
decided get people over to work here in factory's and other 'dirty' jobs
that the original dutch inmates did not want to do. While thinking they
could stay here the original plan was that they could work here until the
job was done or that others would want the job back again. When they
didn't make efforts of leaving the government started building cheap
buildings where these people could live. Small, cheap and hard to keep
clean. Never getting some more money for their hard work or after getting
on the street, fired or otherwise a lot of frustrations came out.
Agression, frustration and you name what feelings you can have when the
land you live in puts you on the street will start to appear. Who comes up
to you to say you should relax: the police. The police starts to 'be' the
government. After a dreadfull plane disaster in 1992 that is still not
solved. Angry feelings will propably still be growing because who will
also be blamed for this...right. 

And last but not least the ordinary man and woman at home. Watching the
television, the news in which we now can see bribary cases, sticks hitting
not just punks but also students demonstrating for better education,
homeless people for looking for a place to sleep when it's raining and the
people going partying in the weekend for making to much noise at the
central meeting point of their city. 

Does these points made make people get angry. The police has the power to
destroy a groupculture and to always get away with it because they are
thelaw.....right? In these days of videocameras and technological advances
isn't it just that we can finally witness how they have been for all their
excisting time, but that we now can finally see what's really happening? 

greetings,
robert

---
#  distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@desk.nl and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/  contact: nettime-owner@desk.nl