Blaming the victim

As I'm sitting in my office at Turner Courts, I see this huge truck with a trailer holding some equipment attached...a backhoe maybe??

It made me think about the crime report statistics I read this morning: "STOLEN VEH RAN INTO TRANSFORMER IN GRASSY COMMON AREA OF APTS."

As I watched the truck park and get ready to unload, I thought of how much it costs to bring in big equipment to fix all of the things that knuckleheads decide to damage...at no expense to themselves. I thought about how it's no wonder DHA (Dallas Housing Authority) and the city gets frustrated with our requests to fix things only to have them broken again.

I then had to adjust my thinking.

If a criminal drives a stolen car into any other neighborhood, we don't blame the neighborhood for that problem. If someone does something wrong in any other neighborhood, the neighborhood is seen as the victim, the criminal is treated as the bad guy, and the problem is fixed in order to keep the community in good condition.

So why do low-income neighborhoods get treated as if they were the ones to blame for the crime that happens?