There would be no demands for “cops out of our neighborhoods”
if there were parents IN those neighborhoods! 

Ald. Skidmore tells me the police who investigated the incident have been traumatized.

They were called to the apartment in the 1700 block of Northport Drive about 2:55 a.m. on Wednesday, April 4, for an infant who was injured. 

“Brutalized” is more like it. Police found a 7-month old baby with two skull fractures, bleeding on the brain, swollen head, bruises to the face and eyes and — for bad measure — a large bite mark on his cheek. Doctors at UW Hospital found a liver laceration. The little fellow was in a coma.

He had been punched in the stomach. A baby.  Thrown against the wall, multiple times. Hard enough to leave marks on the wall. Hard enough to leave the baby’s hair embedded in one of the marks.

The court commissioner said the assailant “beat the hell” out of that baby, the WI State Journal reports.

James E. Johnson, age 19, is charged with first-degree reckless injury. He is the boy’s father and the mother’s “boyfriend.”Let’s not pussyfoot here, folks. The man is a seed donor who had his fun but won’t accept the responsibility — not of marriage nor of fatherhood. 

Arrest the mother, the girl friend, the enabler 

There is reason why civilizations over the millennia — in every corner of the world — demanded commitment before sex. A wedding ring, something of value. Fathers giving away the bride after being convinced his daughter’s suitor could cherish his bride and provide for his family. You know, those middle class values that have stood civilization in such good steed, for so long. The kind of values that, in today’s supposedly enlightened society, get law professor Amy Wax in trouble for espousing.

We say: Arrest the mother for putting her child in harm’s way.  Charge her with being an accessory to the crime for debasing herself. 

Should this 7-month old child survive, will he ever be the same? 

How many other children have been traumatized?

This is why the whole Derail the Jail movement is a sick joke. The “school-to-prison pipeline” meme misses the point. There would be no demands for “cops out of our neighborhoods” if there were parents IN those neighborhoods. 

Can we start teaching discipline and accountability in the schools? And staff the halls with MORE cops!

Speaking of parenting, from this Sunday’s cop blotter:

Saturday, 1:53 p.m., the Walgreens at 5702 Raymond Rd. A 5-year-old AAF walked into the store “half-dressed and with no apparent adult supervision.  Officers and staff stood by with the child for over an hour until an adult arrived and indicated that she was the child’s grandmother.  Apparently, grandmother and other adults in the home were sleeping when the child let herself out.  Child Protective Services (CPS) was contacted and will initiate an investigation on Monday.”

Everyone at the 5-year-old’s house is sleeping at one-thirty in the afternoon? Same neighborhood, early this Sunday morning (04—8-18).

Stolen Auto at 12:51 a.m.. Cop is alerted to a stolen auto on on Russett Road. Cop follows the car. “After a few turns, four juveniles exited the vehicle and fled.” Yep, the auto turned out stolen.

Ten minutes later, at 1:02 a.m.

“While investigating/recovering the stolen auto noted above, another call was broadcasted as a stolen auto from the Russett Road area.  Investigators believed it is possible that the same juveniles who had run from the first stolen auto recovery were responsible.  It is believed that another vehicle taken from the 5800 block of Russett Rd had been stolen by the same juveniles who subsequently had a minor crash and ran from this vehicle as well.”

Now it’s 1:53 a.m.

“While investigating a series of stolen autos in the West district, officers learned of yet another stolen auto. This time, the car was taken from the 6400 block of Bettys Lane.  The car had been left running while the owner had gone inside of their residence.  Again, investigation was developed to suggest that the same cadre of juveniles were responsible for taking this auto. … Investigation continuing.”

All this between 1 and 2 in the morning, at least four kids. Where are the parents? Arrest them. There are consequences for their lack of discipline.

Sure, social service the hell out of them. But start the process with a criminal arrest. Bring to a conviction. Finish off with a meaningful punishment. Because we need to get good and judgmental here and say, This Ain’t Right!

Oh, wait! Here’s a clue where those parents might have been: 

It’s after bar time, 2 in the cold morning of Sunday, April 8. Police are called to Connections Bar, 3737 E Washington Ave. The tavern closes and everyone spilled out into the parking lot for a big brawl; at least 30 people are involved. Two women are injured. The fighting doesn’t stop until one of the brawlers pulls out a gun and fires, “causing everyone to flee.”

What you want to bet they don’t return home to do bed checks?

Why real fathers matter

 

A Manhattan Institute scholar wrote for the Atlantic magazine: 

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the large majority of black women were married before they had children. Black children were less likely than whites to grow up in two-parent homes, but only slightly so. It was only after 1960, even as more black men were finding jobs and even as legal discrimination was being dismantled with civil-rights legislation, that the family began to unravel. It was precisely that unexpected disconnect that spurred Daniel Patrick Moynihan to warn that “the cycle of poverty and disadvantage will continue to repeat itself” in his 1965 report.

Children suffer when their parents go to prison, he writes. Yet he says nothing about the suffering of black children growing up in chaotic families, though that suffering is itself highly correlated with the scourge of ghetto crime and incarceration.

72% of black children are born to unmarried mothers. The majority of those children will see contact with their fathers “drop sharply”; within a few years, about a third of dads will basically just disappear.

A study in the The Journal of Law and Economics finds a link between out-of-wedlock births and crime. (Source here.)

Why real fathers matter.