[speaker001:] okay
[speaker002:] so how serious is the subject of crime in your area
[speaker001:] well needless to say here in Washington DC this is the war zone uh DC around here stands for drug capital or death capital it's uh it's really bad here uh for example the uh local high school uh they've already found two students with sawed off shotguns
[speaker002:] jeez
[speaker001:] and they're starting to uh get these hand held metal detectors so they can inspect the kids every morning when they come to school of all things so it
[speaker002:] well luckily it hasn't gotten that bad here uh San Jose actually has a pretty good record in terms of being relatively low on violent crime
[speaker001:] uh-huh uh-huh
[speaker002:] uh but it's on the uprise especially in a lot of the uh outlying agricultural towns
[speaker001:] uh-huh
[speaker002:] uh because you end up having a lot of gangs forming uh largely around the Hispanic core
[speaker001:] uh-huh
[speaker002:] uh it seems to be that uh gang warfare follows very rapidly on the heels of poverty conditions
[speaker001:] uh-huh right that's how they uh they bind themselves together in groups I guess and uh now the interestingly enough I don't think we have here a a lot of gangs but uh
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] only a couple uh of not a whole large group of them but uh just a few most of them centered around uh drug territory
[speaker002:] uh-huh uh-huh
[speaker001:] and so they're protecting their economic interests I guess and uh now nowadays the latest thing I've I've read about in the paper here that they're doing as far as
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] uh crimes involving stealing cars is that instead of stealing uh cars like at night breaking into them or whatever they will pick out a car that they want and wait until you show up and then as you get out of the car they just uh step up and uh take the keys off of you and drive the car away and leave you standing in front of your house
[speaker002:] oh well that's efficient
[speaker001:] yeah that's the uh latest thing that way there's no damage to the car or anything they just wait for you to show up after they've picked out which one they want
[speaker002:] they're decided they're completely unworried about being identified or anything of that sort
[speaker001:] uh-huh right just wait for you to drive to your house you get out and they get in off they go with your car
[speaker002:] wow
[speaker001:] so it's uh I think they call it car jacking around here
[speaker002:] yeah yeah I'd heard that phrase
[speaker001:] uh-huh yeah that's kind of the latest thing but oh every year in the DC area it gets progressively worse as far as the number of homicides so it's uh it's unfortunate that we feel sometimes even that we have to bring our kids up in this area because we're not from around here we're from uh I'm from Ohio and my wife's from Florida so
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] and we've just come from twenty years in the military and uh which is an entirely different environment so this is a whole new thing for for us to to have to put up with and it's uh really scary sometimes
[speaker002:] yeah there aren't that many places that are safe from that sort of thing nowadays
[speaker001:] right and it's pretty bad when they're using metal detectors in school and uh of course the mayor uh of DC is having a real problem uh
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] trying to what do you do to to reduce crime in a in a major city like DC where it's a way of life for everybody it's uh I would hate to have to wrestle with that problem I don't know what what the solution is uh there's no way they can stop the drugs and that's what's causing all the killing
[speaker002:] well uh there's a couple of things that I've heard uh most of them are fairly uh radical in terms of what you'd have to do uh
[speaker001:] uh-huh uh-huh
[speaker002:] course the the reason that that these kids tend to to turn toward the drugs and everything else seems seems to be just you know the the the end results of of poverty and and parents that aren't doing any parenting and everything else because I mean you know the parents aren't making a living at anything
[speaker001:] uh-huh right and they see all their friends and neighbors uh
[speaker002:] uh and they're accidental parents half the time anyway
[speaker001:] yeah and their friends are driving Mercedes and so it's actually they grow up with that as their way of life and uh I think uh to a large extent they don't understand the concept that what they're doing is actually illegal because this is the way they were raised
[speaker002:] it's illegal but it's not wrong because all their friends do it
[speaker001:] right exactly so maybe it's the law that wrong in their eyes and they they say well it's
[speaker002:] yeah
[speaker001:] it's the law that's uh got to be changed instead of their way of life so I don't know it's I'm glad it's not the kind of problem I have to come up with an answer to because it's not easy
[speaker002:] well I think that the drug thing would actually be relatively easy to solve in terms of of an actual solution to the problem um
[speaker001:] uh-huh
[speaker002:] the the social the other social problems wouldn't wouldn't go away
[speaker001:] right they've always been with us
[speaker002:] uh I mean there's there's been a lot of and I used to think that this whole argument was completely bogus but then the more I thought about it the more sense it made is that uh alcohol is as bad a drug as anything else
[speaker001:] uh-huh uh-huh
[speaker002:] uh and prohibition didn't stop it and didn't do anything really to slow
[speaker001:] right