An article I read in Time

[Handgun Midas]

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1565527,00.html

Article on Milwaukee's recent crime wave.
The part that struck me was the spun langauge used to describe the attempted murder of one woman who tried to make a stand for her community.

Ester Hodges learned that the hard way. A former construction worker who moved into a west-side Milwaukee home three years ago, she says a neighbor's young daughters terrorized her street and, more personally, bullied her children. Hodges, 48, became a one-woman block watch, calling the police regularly, buying surveillance cameras with her own money and speaking out at community meetings. "I let the police know time after time that trouble was coming," she says. Briefly last spring the police monitored her area more closely.

Three weeks after the patrols stopped, however, Hodges says, a threatening group showed up at her house. Police still haven't sorted out exactly what happened next, but by the end, Hodges had been shot in the stomach. No charges have been brought in her shooting. She survived, and her neighbors eventually moved, but police are investigating whether Hodges may have taken justice into her own hands by firing at her [highlight]antagonizers[/highlight]. No one else was hit.

So IF she fired back (the article is vague on if she did),
she didn't act in self-defense, she took justice into her own hands.
Bet she said "Go ahead punks, make my day" too.

And the suspected youths that broke into her home and succeeded in shooting her?
They were just antagonizers, not attempted murderers. Nothing to worry about, really.

It's time magazine, I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but I was reading it to kill time and that part made me visably react.


This part was irritating as well:

The majority of the parolees entered prison in their early 20s or late teens. Most never finished school or held a job, and they lack the skills to do so. In Wisconsin 70% of prisoners struggle with drug or alcohol addiction.

"If we don't want to see them again and again, we've got to offer them more than the clothes on their backs, a Greyhound ticket and $15 in their pocket," says Dolan, referring to aid cons receive when they leave prison.

Even those who participated in substance-abuse counseling and the few education and job-training programs available while inside say those initiatives didn't prepare them for life back on the streets.....

Often the alternative is sleeping on a drug-house sofa or rejoining a gang simply for a place to bunk.

So they don't have a nice bed, so there's just no alternative to gang-violence, huh?

 

[noresttill]

It sounds like it could also be construed that she started it and fired and they fired back, hitting her. I dont see a gang of youths attempting to kill someone and only firing one shot in the belly.

BUT... It purpose of the article is served by being vague.

Jesse

 

[ArmedBear]

The majority of the parolees entered prison in their early 20s or late teens. Most never finished school or held a job, and they lack the skills to do so. In Wisconsin 70% of prisoners struggle with drug or alcohol addiction.

"If we don't want to see them again and again, we've got to offer them more than the clothes on their backs, a Greyhound ticket and $15 in their pocket," says Dolan, referring to aid cons receive when they leave prison.

...


Often the alternative is sleeping on a drug-house sofa or rejoining a gang simply for a place to bunk.

In Texas, more of them would be provided with a chair, in which they could sit, at state expense, for the remainder of their lives. Perhaps they'd prefer to be tried in Texas instead of Wisconsin?

No point in even discussing anything in Time, though. That's why I don't read it any more.

 

[rritter]

A chair?!? What, you think we're barbarians?? We give them a nice, comfy, padded gurney on which they can lie down and rest for the rest of their lives.