Afternoon Read: Massena’s troubles
Massena, NY. Image: maps.google.com
Happy Friday! As we end the week, a brief wrap-up on this week’s events in Massena. On Wednesday, as we know, there was a stand-off in that village that ended when three suspects were arrested (WWNY-TV reported yesterday that bail had been denied for two of them.) The three suspects have been charged with an array of crimes, incuding attempted assault, criminal possession of a weapon, reckless endangerment, tampering with evidence, and menacing. It’s also now been confirmed that this case is connected with a kidnapping case last month, also in Massena (Daily Courier-Observer.)
Yesterday I blogged about the Massena village PD’s acquisition of a specially-equipped Humvee, which it plans to use to do surveillance on people selling drugs.
Now, I don’t know Massena all that well, but apparently there are some troubles in the village, and a report last night from WWNY-TV laid those out, according to Mayor Jim Hidy and Police Chief Timmy Currier (both also quoted extensively in yesterday’s Humvee article). Clearly both are concerned about escalating crime in their community, and the report quotes Hidy as saying officials are “going to do everything necessary to get these people off the streets.”
Crimes are mostly drug-related, police say, and while Police Chief Currier isn’t sure what’s attracting criminals to Massena neighborhoods. He does have a theory, however:
We blame this on transplants, but if you look at it closely, there are some local people that are intertwined in all this. In many of these cases, it’s younger girls, 19, 20, 21 year old girls that are connecting with these guys in some manner.
Apparently there are also turf battles going on, as (this from the report, not Hidy or Currier) “as Massena and other north country communities are becoming a battleground…among drug dealers who are relocating to set up drug havens.”
I’m very interested to see how this develops. Clearly there’s something going on in Massena, and you hear a lot of rumors, which I won’t print here. Whether drug crime is escalating in the manner implied by recent events (and indeed whether a highly visible police vehicle acquisition makes things look worse than they are) I’m not sure. I’m also not sure if “transplants”, who are often blamed for crime in smaller communities, are to blame — they may well be, I certainly don’t have more information than the chief of police. But I’ll be watching.
You can’t blame it all on “outsiders” or transplants. Massena and Ogdensburg and Govenuer and to some extent even Canton Potsdam; are all very poor communities. We have 12% unemployment in this county combined with high levels of poverty, we are not that different from other poverty and crime filled areas in other parts of the state and country. As less and less opportunity is available there will be more and more desperation in SLC leading to more and more crime. This is simply the underbelly that has always been here, now growing into a majority.
Sorry to disagree with you Mervel… the majority of the folks in Massena are wonderful caring people . It is a small but unfortunatly growing number of individuals causing more than their share of trouble.
cj sorry I didn’t mean to imply that the majority of folks in Massena were a problem, I would agree that the majority are wonderful.
However we can’t pretend that there is not a growing underclass and that we have relatively severe poverty in SLC including Massena. This is no larger of a problem in Massena than it is in Ogdensburg or Gouverneur etc. When you have large numbers of people not working large numbers of people not working and with little hope for the future they in general are going to be a problem for any community.
However I believe the announcement of Alcoa is a VERY good sign for the future.
Mervel,
Is the “underclass” anything like the previously mentioned “undesireables”? Or is it just poor, unemployed people who cause problems? Sounds a lot like what some have accused Republicans of saying.
I don’t know Larry? I do know that areas with high rates of poverty have more crime that areas with low rates of poverty. SLC is a county that would be classified as having high rates of poverty.
I don’t know or care what that means as far as liberal or conservative, I don’t really give a shit, the fact is those sorts of distinctions are really kind of bull crap when it comes to real communities with real people and real problems, Liberal v Conservative is a false made up talking point ;so people in the media and in national politics can keep us all upset and agitated. Yes we all veer toward certain attitudes, but the fact is you don’t care about massena you just want to make another point about Liberals or conservatives.
Mervel, You are absolutely correct in your contention that the Liberal versus Conservative points of contention are contrived with the goal of keeping us upset agitated and at each others throats. Although the media and political operatives are the faces of the in-flamers in our faces agitating, the actual culprits are the deep pocket individuals who own the media and the politicians, lock, stock and barrel. The reason for the liberal conservative chasm in America is because if we were all rational enough to look at who is doing what to the country and it’s citizens we would quickly realize who they are and vote their boot licking lackeys out of office in a heartbeat. The North, South, Liberal, conservative divide is purposefully continued to keep us focused on relatively minor issues which are blown way out of proportion to divert our focus from the folks who are stealing the country and the livelihood of future generation right under our noses. It is disgusting that we are so easily befuddled and fooled into turning upon friends and neighbors over petty issues.
“I don’t know or care what that means as far as liberal or conservative, I don’t really give a shit, the fact is those sorts of distinctions are really kind of bull crap when it comes to real communities with real people and real problems,”
Now it’s all “bull crap”? Undesireables, outsiders, fear, paranoia, underclass…are now all real people and real problems? Everyone screams if conservatives talk that way but when it happens in your own backyard it’s the real deal. Now the whole liberal vs. conservative thing is a big plot to distract us….from what? What happened to all the anti-conservative rhetoric? It all sounds kind of hypocritical to me.
Larry “O”, Who is it you are convinced is being hypocritical and are you certain hypocritical is the applicable word? From a couple of the multitudes of definitions on the internet: ““Hypocritical” has a narrow, very specific meaning. It describes behavior or speech that is intended to make one look better or more pious than one really is. It is often wrongly used to label people who are merely narrow-minded or genuinely pious. Do not confuse this word with “hypercritical,” which describes people who are picky. The word comes up most often when discussing political and religious figures who are sometimes caught engaging in behavior that goes against their professed beliefs. A person who engages in hypocritical behavior could be called a hypocrite, their behavior, an act of hypocrisy.”
Ken,
Was your post supposed to be clever? It wasn’t. I’m referring to people who love to criticize conservatives (and Republicans, for that matter) for being intolerant, paranoid, fearful, etc., but when it comes to their hometown find it OK to use words like undesireable, underclass, etc. Sounds like hypocrisy to me.
Larry “O”, You cut me to the “quick”.
But I am not a “Liberal”. I don’t even know what that really means any more. On local issues you mainly have to take a hard look at what is happening and work together to get a handle on it, sometimes that means admitting things about our communities we don’t like to admit. But always going back to this liberal-conservative stuff just does not get us anywhere.
Also, the pretext of this whole thread is a little misleading. Massena has nor more or less troubles than any other areas of SLC, we have a tendency in the NC to say well at least we are not like them or at least we are not as bad as ogdensburg or whatever the place is that is located 15 miles down the road that all bad things happen, and no bad things happen in our communities because being 25 miles apart we are really really a LOT different.
These are common NC problems we can’t just lay them on Massena.