Teen pleads guilty

[bobbbiez]

frank, I understand where you are coming from but allow me to explain why I feel he should have gotten the full sentence for attacking a Police Officer and why I feel the victim should have not agreed to this plea bargain.

I am a member of the website, PoliceLink.com, and it's sickening when I get notified on a daily basis of a death or attack on a Law Enforcement Officer. Everyday either by reading the newspaper, watching the news on TV or websites we are informed of another incident against these Officers. It is out of control. It has to stop. These Officers are out there trying to protect us and are getting killed doing just that. That is the facts.

These are "people" who have families that will never see them again. They are not just "names" because we don't know them personally or because they don't live in our area.

As the public where do we start? Well, with this family attacking an Officer would have been a great beginning. Especially since we lost two Officers locally in the last few years. Do we forget that quickly?
The message sent out could have been loud and clear by all involved by prosecuting to the fullest.

[corner]

Frank my comment on benny was actually tongue in cheeck the only serious part was i feel the current chief should have been promoted from within, not a state trooper who had no experience in inner city law enforcement. this is not to diminish the fine jobs that troopers do, but it is 2 totally diferent types of policing. crime shhould be confronted head on butthis does not genrate revenue like traffic enforcement and codes enforcement does. when our cops areallowed to do what they have been trained to do instead as revenue generators for municipalities then and only then will you see a difference on the street corners. its time to start sending some of these dealers and bangers back to brooklyn and the bronx in body bags maybe some of our crime problems will abate. the inner city is not the only issue when you look a county wide statistics crimes such as home invasion which is growing at an alarming rate burglaries,and armed robberies are being committed by some of the wayward children of new hartford,clinton,whitesboro, holland patent must get boring in the burbs for some of these kids. many of whom by the way come from thes areas to utica to buy their recreational drugs.

[bobbbiez]

Gee frank, if you come to visit me at my home guess you'll have to be escorted to your car also. It ain't no lie or picnic but we're hanging in there.

Just to enlighten you how strong I feel about this subject and just why I am protecting my choice to keep my home and continue to live in a neighborhood I've lived in for 27 years now.

We have had many a threatening phone calls, rocks thrown through my windows and at one time had Police protection for awhile at my home.
We have learned what a gun shot sounds like especially when it's in our own backyards.. We have had a Police Officer shot at through a door by a drug dealer on our street and by the way it was the "good" people on the street that kept the Police informed of the drug dealings at that residence. We are now in the process of ridding our street of another crack house that opened up recently.

I find the people in Cornhill think they are the only ones who have the most serious problems and that is so damn untrue. We have been through the same but Cornhill is getting all the attention and the extra protection.
The difference between us and the people in Cornhill is that we don't sit back and just complain and we do co-operate with the Police and we do keep involved in our neighborhood problems which will hopefully keep our area free of the scum who are trying to take it over. Like I stated in an earlier post, "it's my "hood" and someone is going to move and it ain't gonna be me after being here for 27 years now.

I do walk in their shoes but I also know and accept my responsibilities if I want a safe neighborhood again.

[froggy]

corner said:

Frank my comment on benny was actually tongue in cheeck the only serious part was i feel the current chief should have been promoted from within, not a state trooper who had no experience in inner city law enforcement. this is not to diminish the fine jobs that troopers do, but it is 2 totally diferent types of policing.

My sentiments all along on the issue. How do you suppose it impacts the morality of the entire police dept when the mayor had to look elsewhere to find a chief? An outsider running the show. Someone who doesn't know this city, nor what it takes to police it. A state trooper vs a police chief in a city like Utica are two entirely different animals. Mabye the guy was super trooper, A#1, but that doesn't translate into a good inner city police chief. If anything, it makes him ill prepared. Someone promoted from within is someone already familiar to the department, someone who probably already commands some respect among the force, and most importantly, someone who is adept to Utica's nuances and cultures. Those are things you can't just hand someone with the signing of a contract, or read in a text book.


Its also ironic that Pylman was one of the arresting officers when Julian found himself on the wrong side of the law some time back before getting the sweet chief deal.

[bobbbiez]

I would have agreed with both of you if it wasn't for the fact that Chief Plyman has been Chief for quite a few years now. It's not like it's his first year.

I don't believe the city is this bad because of Plyman's leadership. It was deteriorating when the old Chief was still in. The signs were on the wall then for all to read but all city departments ignored the warnings and didn't address the issues until it got really bad and out of control.

Not fair to blame one man for our problems since it started long before he was appointed.

[froggy]

bobbbiez said:

I would have agreed with both of you if it wasn't for the fact that Chief Plyman has been Chief for quite a few years now. It's not like it's his first year.

I don't believe the city is this bad because of Plyman's leadership. It was deteriorating when the old Chief was still in. The signs were on the wall then for all to read but all city departments ignored the warnings and didn't address the issues until it got really bad and out of control.

Not fair to blame one man for our problems since it started long before he was appointed.

No but it is fair to blame him for making it worse. Even if it were true that things were going downhill prior to his arrival, bringing an outsider that knows nothing about Utica didn't help the overall picture.

And it is actually this bad because of Pylman's lack of leadership.

[corner]

hes not being blamed for anything inso much that it is realyy the mayors office driving the money oriented enforcemnt compared to actual crime fighting..however pthe curretnt chief did not acknowledge a gang problem until lastyear, when in 1998 my partenr and i presented his department with a comprehensive rport listing all themajor players and whowasincharge etc.i found my copy of part of this report today and printed out a copy and many of the same player were recently areested and convicted for gang activity. my partner and i were given this assignemnt to identify local gangs and their relationships to people on parole supervison. this report was ignored by upd at the time,

[frankcor]

bobbbiez, I understand your anger. I think we now better understand each other's position on the sentencing and can respect how we end up feeling about it the way we do. that's a good outcome.

I admire your choice to stay in your home and fight for it. I believe there are people like you in Cornhill, too. and there are people everywhere trapped with no choice but to remain in crime-ridden neighborhoods. It would be sad to see that result in neighborhood vs neighborhood turf battles about who gets better protection.

corner, one of the limitations of this form of communication is the inability to see each other's facial and body expressions while we're writing. i admit to thinking it funny when i hear folks suggest we train some of these thugs how to shoot better in order to reduce their numbers in some way. I think we understand each other a little better too.

I'm in no position to talk about police department leadership in utica -- i haven't paid attention to news in that regard until recently. but i see deteriorating neighborhoods in Rome and I hope we're going to do the right things here to fight it.

[bobbbiez]

corner & froggy, I would like to continue our talk about whose fault it is but I'm pretty tired right now. Have to get some beauty sleep.

Just a few thoughts I would like to leave with you.

Utica has deteriorated because of all City Departments from Mayors office down, who have ignored the warning signs that were there years ago, not just the UPD. All have to be given credit for not acting sooner on the troubled areas. From the Codes Department and the Common Council who took their blessed time getting after the slumlords and making them responsible for who they rent to.

corner, in defense of the Chief Plyman concerning gang activities. I have to say he wasn't in denial considering this problem until recently. I attended the first Citizen's Police Academy and graduated from the Academy over three years ago and we were made aware of and discussed the gang activities here in Utica in our classes.
I do respect you highly for attempting to help with this most serious problem. My hat is off to you. Thank you.
Maybe someday you and I can get together and I can tell you what I see is a main problem why our neighborhoods are falling apart so quickly.

I also have to defend a couple of our Councilmen who have been trying to get a curfew instituted and other ideas here in Utica for over five years now to help curb the gang activities in our neighborhoods but are shot down by other members on the Council. I helped to get petitions signed and turned in to the Council by hundreds of citizens who agreed with the proposals of these few Councilmen's suggestions to help with this fast growing problem. Just to inform you that the one Councilmen who was the loudest to shoot down any ideas came from the Councilman in Cornhill. Kind of ironic isn't it.

At this time, I don't want to keep pointing a finger. I want to see some action and I want to see all City Departments work together and come up with some solid solutions to help rid our city of the scum causing us so much grief.

Well, that's all folks. Going nite, nite. Sweet dreams and blessings to all.

[Ralph]

I had a lot of respect for the Chief at first, still do, but my opinion of his abilities to produce results here has diminished greatly.

Corner has hit on a few very true but less than well known points.

Promoting from the outside was demoralizing to say the least.
And despite bringing in gang experts from the outside almost every year, he knew about it almost from the get go.
When I first ran the Weed & Seed program we brought in the usual “gang experts” who had their public forum and did their “thing”. But off the public stage they all said the same thing…..you have a problem.
Pylman denied it and instructed the rest of the shop that there was no problem and they were to tell the public as much.

Corner, I imagine in the end your report wound up in the circular file or buried so deep it will take years to find again.

Despite what some people think, there were a lot of people in Cornhill working hard to get rid of what crime they could around here.
If you think back Bobbbiez to when I was facilitating the meetings, I told everyone there it was coming your way and they better do something about it. Most didn’t listen (including the elected officials) and now you have to pay the pauper.

While there is a lot of talk about more money for bolstering the PD, more could be done without all the extra bucks. Even though it was through grants, we invested heavily into crime mapping software and training……..but we already knew where it all was and didn’t really need and electronic gizmo to tell anyone.

Things have been bad for many years, and it will take many years for it to get better again. But for people like Bobbbiez and Maria Skates pushing the envelop, it will happen for them sooner.

[corner]

Ralph i was a member of the first weed and seed teams making our first raids in september or october of 1999,it goes by a different name now but the intent was the same agencies of local federal and state law enforcement banding together to serve warrants and track down fugitives what we need is more of that on a higner level even using RICO stautes to break up these gangs the way its used to fight the mafia the tongs and the yakuza throughout the country.. the only problem anybody would have with that is yellling that we were profiling based on race, but the last time i looked the bloods, crips,npc, the grove street gang,close quarters/closed mouth , seymour group,etc were not duking whites in.

[froggy]

the problem with Pylman, and part of it is his lack of experience with a city, is denial. Just like he denied there was and still is a gang problem, after the shooting of Walter Washington, the public voiced its concerns about racial tensions between the black community and the police, he simply stated there was not and that was the end of story from him.

Problem is, whether or not he wants to believe a problem exists, a good number of people do feel it exists and its deemed necessary for him to acknowledge their concerns. There was a public venue with community leaders shortly after the shooting, to which he and Julian didn't bother to attend, but I believe DA Arcuri did. How can they call themselves public officials or public servants when they can't be bothered to address public concerns?

then again, after the tragic shooting death of Officer Lindsey, Pylman managed to slight the Hispanic community. When you want the public's help, you don't alienate them, you reach out to them to build bridges and trust. When you don't address their fears and concerns, what you see in Utica is the exact thing that happens. This is a major disconnect, and what I've read out of the La Bella's office looks promising to try and build that back up again.

As far as this kid going to state prison for the officer beating, I'm not so sure its a good thing. Before I get chastized over it, I will tell you why. Think about it, what better "badge" to wear around prison than beating up a cop? If you really want to rehabilitate this kid, throwing him in where he will be accepted and maybe even praised is not a good thing.

[Clipper]

I would have to agree with froggy to a certain extent. We tend to send "kids" to prison, and make them into adult gangsters. Their crime becomes a badge of courage, or a matter of pride instead of an incident of shame.

Perhaps a short stint in jail and a whole lot of probation and many many hours of community service with some connection to the police, would better serve the situation.

I guess my first instinct to give the kid the max, was simply a reaction to the heinous nature of a kid blatantly assaulting a cop. The ultimate good to be served would be to imprison the adults that contributed to the situation, and to chastise the storeowner that insisted on screwing the kid out of the price of the cigar that he should not have sold to begin with.

There is enough blame to go around for everyone. The only one totally innocent in this incident is the cop that was beaten. He seems willing to accept the decision and plea deal, so why should we dispute the idea?

[froggy]

I don't like what happened either, and justice is a fine balancing act. One hand you want to give him the max to dissuade others from doing the same, on the other you have to keep the interests of rehabilitation in mind. Sooner or later the kid gets out and what he will be like when he gets out is what will matter. Putting him in State will put him out of touch with people he knows, and in all likelyhood will have a negative impact on him. Send him to county along with plenty of community service, including a public apology to the officer involved. The fine line is keeping him focused on why it was wrong instead of putting him in a place with plenty of people who can justify why it was right.

[bobbbiez]

froggy, you make alot of good points, but what I understand is that this kid along with other members of his family have a history of getting in trouble. That makes me wonder if he can be rehabilitated and what more does he have to do against society to prove that point?

As far as him doing time in prison and being "out of touch with the people he knows," then if they give his brother and his Momma, who were also involved in beating up the Officer, the same time we won't have to worry about him being lonely for the people he knows.

Sorry, couldn't resist being sarcastic on that one. ;D