Fighting Crime in a Future Time! - Ian

So, Jon and I have decided that we are keeping The Bull on life support. I have to confess his drunken (though very well-typed) post of Friday evening caught me quite off-guard. I had been entertaining thoughts of taking down the old girl, startling as though it would be to the droves of devoted Irish Bull readers. But, if Drunken Jon (DJ, as he shall henceforth be known) thinks it's worth fighting for, then let us fight.

Now... A topic. Alright, I'm going to take one bit out of a much longer thing I wrote the other day. Calgary and crime, the topic du jour. So "du jour" in fact, that I believe it's already old news.

Calgary talks shit about how much safer Toronto it is here. The people are better here, they say. Toronto had 78 murders in 2005. That works out to just under 20 every 3 months for a city of 2.5 million (2001, StatsCan). Calgary has just broken 1 million and they just had the 8th murder of the year a few days ago. So, for a city less than half the size, they have just under half as many killings. So, the moral fibre of Calgarians is negligibly superior to Toronto's, but their cover-up method is the zinger. It's always gang-related, as if that makes it okay. The police just hire a few more guys to bust up the gangs and leave it at that. Why do they leave it at that, though?

Here's where the delusion sets in, kids. The good citizens of Calgary just don't acknowledge the gap between the rich and the poor here. "We've got oil and gas, our prosperity cheques, we're all rich!" There are lots of poor people here, particularly natives. I don't say that as a slight. It's true. I mean, poverty knows no racial boundaries, but natives in Calgary seem to have it worse than most. After I leave my job, I walk down to my train stop, which is right in front of the Telus Communications building, a tall gleaming skyscraper. Clean. A brand new steel and glass shelter to keep us dry from the rare occurrence of rain or snow while we stand. Across the tracks, on the south side of 7th Ave is the most pathetically dilapidated row of pawn shops/bodegas, convenience stores/bodegas, restaurants/bodegas, video arcade/bodegas I've ever come across.

A brief definition of bodega, from Dave Chappelle in "Half Baked" is a convenience store with very little in it and what items are there are generally old and dusty. The store is just a front for selling drugs. The only fresh things in the place are drugs and cigarettes. Everything along this stretch is clearly a front for something. There's a "Hamburgur" place that surely serves you a half-pound burgur with a side of crack and a cocaine cola to wash it all down. And the napkins can be replaced with acid for a bit more, too.

The point of this aside? Calgary lives in a fantasy land where it is unimaginable that people would have a reason to assault or kill someone. Who's desperate in this land of plenty? There's money for everyone! And to that end, I must concede, there's a point. There is help wanted EVERYWHERE in this city. I have made it a rule for myself to not give money to beggars, because if you don't have a job, you're just not trying. You can get a job doing anything here, so it seems. But be that as it may, some people do just fall on the wrong side of the tracks. They fall in with the wrong crowd and find it hard to climb out of it. There are some very poor people in Calgary. There is desperation. There is violence, and many people in this city are so naïve they think just because they're not in a gang that they can't possibly be affected. I wonder if the people I see fighting outside the arcade and buying drugs got their prosperity cheques that Alberta's 19 year old guys spent on XBox 360's. Maybe they did, but like everyone else on my side of the tracks, I'm too scared to go over and ask.