[speaker001:] Okay.
[speaker002:] So how serious is the,
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER].
[speaker002:] subject of crime in your area?
[speaker001:] Well, needless to say, here in Washington, D C [LAUGHTER] this is the war zone. Uh, D C around here stands for drug capital or death capital.
[speaker002:] [LAUGHTER].
[speaker001:] It's, uh, it's really bad here. Uh, for example, [throat clearing] 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,
[speaker002:] Well, luckily, it hasn't gotten that bad here.
[speaker001:] Uh-huh.
[speaker002:] Uh, San Jose actually has a pretty good record in terms of being relatively low on violent crime.
[speaker001:] 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 [NOISE] poverty conditions.
[speaker001:] Uh-huh, right. That's how they, uh, they bind themselves together in groups, I guess and, uh,
[speaker002:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] Now, the, interestingly enough, I don't think we have here, a, a lot of gangs, but, uh, only a couple, uh
[speaker002:] Uh-huh.
[speaker001:] of, not a whole large group of them, but, uh, just a few. Most of them centered around, uh, drug territory.
[speaker002:] Uh-huh.
[speaker001:] [Throat clearing] And so they're protecting their [LAUGHTER] economic interests, I guess.
[speaker002:] Yeah [LAUGHTER].
[speaker001:] And, uh, nowadays the latest thing I've, I've read about in the paper here that they're doing as far as, 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 [LAUGHTER] and leave you standing in front of your house.
[speaker002:] 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
[speaker001:] Uh-huh.
[speaker002:] of that sort.
[speaker001:] Right. [LAUGHTER] Just wait for you to drive to your house, you get out and they get in [LAUGHTER],
[speaker002:] [LAUGHTER].
[speaker001:] off they go with your car.
[speaker002:] Wow.
[speaker001:] [Breathing] So it's, uh, I think they call it car jacking around here [LAUGHTER].
[speaker002:] Yeah, yeah, I'd heard that phrase.
[speaker001:] [Throat clearing] Uh-huh, yeah, that's kind of the latest thing, but [breathing], every year in the D C area it gets progressively worse as far as the number of homicides, so it's, [lipsmack] 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:] [Breathing] 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 [breathing], for us to, to have to put up with and it's, uh, really scary sometimes.
[speaker002:] Yeah, there aren't that many,
[speaker001:] [Throat clearing].
[speaker002:] 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
[speaker002:] Uh-huh.
[speaker001:] and, uh, of course, the mayor, uh, of D C is having a real problem, uh, trying to, what do you do to, to reduce crime in a, in a major city like D C 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,
[speaker001:] [Throat clearing] [faint].
[speaker002:] [Breathing] there's a couple of things that I've heard, uh, most of them are fairly, uh, radical in terms
[speaker001:] Uh-huh.
[speaker002:] of what you'd have to do.
[speaker001:] Uh-huh.
[speaker002:] Uh, course the, [scratching] the reason that, that these kids tend to, to turn toward the drugs and everything else s-, seems to be just, you know, the, the, the end results of, of poverty and, and
[speaker001:] Uh-huh.
[speaker002:] 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:] Right [LAUGHTER].
[speaker002:] Uh,
[speaker001:] And they see all their friends and neighbors, uh,
[speaker002:] 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 [LAUGHTER] exactly, so maybe it's the law that wrong in their eyes and they
[speaker002:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] they say, well, it's, it's the law that's, uh, got to be changed instead of their way of life, so, I don't know, it's [lipsmack], I'm glad it's not the kind of problem I have to [breathing] [LAUGHTER] come up with an answer to because it's not
[speaker002:] Well
[speaker001:] easy.
[speaker002:] I think that the drug thing would actually be relatively easy to solve in terms of, of an actual solution to the problem. Uh
[speaker001:] Uh-huh.
[speaker002:] the, the social, the other social problems wouldn't, wouldn't go away.
[speaker001:] Right.
[speaker002:] Uh,
[speaker001:] They've always been with us.
[speaker002:] I mean, there's, there's been a lot of, uh, and I used to think that this whole argument was completely bogus, but then, the
[speaker001:] Uh-huh.
[speaker002:] 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.
[speaker002:] Uh, and prohibition didn't stop it and didn't do anything really
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER] Right.
[speaker002:] to slow,