well Hal what's uh what's crime like in Dallas
well it depends where in Dallas you are there are certainly parts of town
uh-huh
i would not want to live in
yeah
because it's a situation it is very location dependent
uh-huh
and there are parts of town here where
when they talk about the nightly gunfire
oh yeah yeah in Baltimore we have similar
i live on the outskirts of Baltimore and uh we live right outside the city
and our neighborhood is pretty much working class people though i'm in graduate school uh i live here because it's close to the university but you know we have uh it it's really funny the only crime we really see
uh-huh
is uh just the kids being malicious
uh-huh
you know and i think most of that is because their parents aren't around that make sense
yeah that uh the what they call the latchkey children
yeah
yeah something like that no one's you know or or fathers are just missing you know so there's no uh
no consistency there in the home or whatever there's no one to tell them what's right and what's wrong you know
you know the suburb i'm in is more of the upper middle class so i think our uh not that we don't have a certain amount of local problems but on the other hand
uh-huh
uh-huh
uh we get the uh affect of the
the city and
uh-huh
uh the main crimes within the suburb here are the the theft crimes
yeah
a small number of assaults
uh well if we have one murder a year
yeah
that's probably as many but then you know you go into Dallas and they are unfortunately
um-hum
uh having murders at a rate greater than one a day
yeah
yeah i think that's we're about the same in Baltimore though um Washington i think is uh
close by and you know they experience a lot more i think they definitely have more problems that uh
uh-huh
in in the area what what do you think can prevent crime
well uh the thing is i don't it's one of those things where if you're a grad student you can appreciate the statistics on unfortunately there are often these correlations that are
uh-huh
inverse of what they should be like uh
wherever there are more
uh criminals there are more policemen but that's which came first
yeah yeah
but on the other side of it is it's it's basically the the problem is within the in the society and the society's views
uh-huh
and uh well since now i'm in my mid forties when i was in grad school
or when i was an undergraduate growing up in a more rural area i thought you know crime was was reasonably unknown and just the situation that's developed with the
uh-huh
yeah
the drug aspect of uh
yeah i think
uh-huh
uh the pushers the dealers and the addicts
um
yeah i i i think i agree with you there
yeah
because it just was not uh something back in the sixties that
uh-huh
uh i even had to worry about but i think you know that
there is a lot in the society where things have changed
uh so it's effected all of us
uh-huh yeah i think they the drug culture definitely has uh is one of the main problems yeah our uh our mayor in uh Baltimore is one of the people that goes on national television and says they should
uh legalize drugs
uh-huh
because it would eliminate the uh the violence
and the uh the under
the the market i guess the the hidden market of the drugs and everything that goes along with it that make sense he's one of the big proponents of that he gets on national television and and says that you know so it's um
uh-huh
and he was a
District Attorney before and a prosecutor before becoming becoming mayor so that's a really stranger you know it's a different viewpoint i uh
you know in a sense i don't i'm not i have real mixed feelings on that because it comes a bit from the angle that the uh
yeah
uh
it would certainly be an interesting test
uh-huh
but the other side of it to me
what happens if we lose worse
uh you well the other side is that unfortunately
yeah
some of the down side and i think if i look back fifty or a hundred years i'd say you know back then there were the opium dens but the thing is if somebody ruined their life
right
uh
society didn't try to then save themselves from it they let this person
um-hum
who had ruined it
uh become well die or whatever i mean they probably became weakened physically and other things to the point that
right yeah
their life expectancy was real short but now we tend to
believe somewhere in the health care system otherwise we need to take care of people even if they have
you know physically ruined themselves
yeah they have induced it themselves yeah that's true
and so to me that's i uh i would certainly like to see a real test of of making drugs real cheap to see if when you make them available people then don't use them
uh-huh
uh-huh well i think you know they did that in Alaska
uh
that that actually Alaska just recently legalized marijuana
uh-huh
but i never i never heard results or anything like that so i never you know plus that's such a that's not a true um
you know it really couldn't be a good test because Alaska's so different than every other part of the country
uh-huh
you know so that but that was interesting you know i i don't crime is one of those things that's uh
i i don't know you know the drug culture the uh
the um
you know i i see it with the kids in the neighborhood just stealing things not thinking anything wrong with it
yeah well the some of that and of course i'm a baby of the old school but it it bothers me from the fifties on not that i'd remember that much from the fifties but but basically we have so much more of the something for nothing mentality
yeah
uh-huh
yeah that's true that's true we worked hard for everything that's very true
and so you know in the there were the sixty four thousand dollar question shows in the fifties but nowadays there's so much on TV where
uh-huh
where people seem to have the idea they can get something for nothing of course
uh-huh
uh i work with lawyers a lot and i see unfortunately we have this whole mentality that somehow there are these pots of money out there that you can sue somebody
and you know there's a million dollars you can have
uh-huh
uh for mental duress or whatever
yeah
but you know the other thing that bothers me in the crime is the uh in Europe they seem to have mentality and drunk driving is a good one is that people are
well indoctrinated their society that drunken driving is unacceptable
right
and yeah if you're going to drink and you may drink you better have your designated driver in this country and for example with alcohol or with drugs is
uh-huh
we don't seem to understand how to handle it as a society to say okay it is okay under these circumstances but if you step outside these bounds
the punishment is
extreme and we mean it
yeah
yeah that i think that uh the drunk driving has just actually just caught on uh uh and i i i really uh my father was hit by a drunk driver when i was in high school and um
uh-huh
uh-huh
that was a very uh
that that was an awful three years afterwards you know of recovery and the difficulties
uh-huh
and uh everything we did and you know the guy went free because this was twelve years ago thirteen years ago there was no his father was even the uh police chief of the town
uh-huh
so there was no repercussion at all
uh-huh
you know other than insurance but he was uninsured
so uh our insurance paid for everything but it was a very difficult time and and then later this was actually funny my brother and i were picked up by the police for questioning because this fellow had bought a a new car and somebody had taken like a baseball bat to it
yeah
and broke all his windows and his lights and his dented it everywhere and they came and questioned us
uh-huh
yeah
you know and
but that kind of shows how our attitude toward drinking and driving
right
was uh misplaced for years that you know
uh-huh
yep
it was an acceptable social behavior
uh-huh
yeah very much so yeah that those are some important points
yeah i that's
those are
what are what does your city have for gun control if anything
well see Maryland is one of the most we just voted in uh gun control strong gun control here in the state of Maryland i i think
