Every weekday at about 3:00pm something phenomenal happens in Philadelphia.
It’s more amazing and more noticeable in North Philadelphia, which is the location of my current humble abode.
So what is this phenomenal thing? You may ask- well it seems that Philadelphia Police show up out of the woodwork, and are on every corner and every sidewalk you can think of.
“How awful! so there are protests every weekday around 3:00pm, or riots, or some cause for commotion?” you may ask, but you would be wrong.
So what really happens around 3:00pm in North Philadelphia?
Well if you will be a little patient you will realize that I am about to tell you…(sheesh)
Every weekday at about 3:00pm school kids get out of school…
I know – silence
It does not quite compute….
Well it seems that the same police that takes hours to show up in an emergency in North Philadelphia, and is capable of keeping you on hold for long periods of time depending on how serious your emergency is…this same police considers the school kids a threat…
Don’t get me wrong. I like the police being around. When I see them around, I feel safer. But it just makes me think about the way Philadelphia perpetuates this cycle and their views that school kids are “riffraff.”
It’s almost as if the bars on the doors and windows in the classroom are not enough (subject of a different blog). Instead we must make sure that these “animals” I mean children don’t destroy anything else…
The Cycle:
The more the police treat the kids like riffraff, the more the kids act like riffraff
The more the kids act like riffraff, the more the police treat them like riffraff