In Philadelphia, I have first hand knowledge of the situation, just from living in various 'hoods',and even wrote a long letter to a reporter from local newspaper giving him the story. He was not interested, as the Dominicans work with cops and city officials who will not move on this because the stores pay tax into a shriveling tax base.
Now, the Dominicans who run the stores themselves are mostly poor 'campesino' types who work very long hours, keep clean store. But, they all under Dominican mob, and do what mob say, so if a shipment come in, they let them use the store as drop off...Shipment comes packed with food items, like case of Goya canned goods...Cops don't bother them because they don't let dealers operate out of stores.
If store owner makes store profitable, or co-operates with right people, he can get 'points' in store ownership...But you will notice that these stores change their names every 10 months to year, the mob move people in and out.
Mob is called 'United States Owners Bodega Federation'.
Now, look here, to see how mob has much power on 'spin':..
Bodega raids will be fully probed, Ramsey assures Dominican community
June 17, 2009|By BARBARA LAKER & WENDY RUDERMAN, [email protected]
Immediately, loud applause broke out in the crowd at the Hunting Park church.
"That's the language the community needed to hear," Danilo Burgos, president of the city's 300-member Dominican Grocers Association, said after the meeting.
http://articles.philly.com/2009-06-17/news/24985422_1_police-officers-raids-task-force
What happen here is this: Police know bodegas are used for heroin and cocaine...Cops, especially Euro-American (White) cops get frustrated because Blacks running city and police let this go on, so they say 'Well, give me some, too'...But also, the cops mete out 'vigilante justice'...Remember, street cops just cannon fodder...Not too smart, but this is the reality.
The real 'Beast' that plagues Kensington is the collapse and uprooting of the manufacturing and blue collar jobs that once lined Allegheny Avenue, once the thriving backbone of North Philadelphia's blue collar economy. At one end of Allegheny Avenue, in the East Falls section, you used to have the Budd Company, which built rail cars, trolleys and heavy machinery associated with the transport industry, along with Tastycake, the company that makes the famous Philadelphia snack cakes, pies and cookies. You had Philco, which made every type of appliance from washing machines to TV sets, and you had a plethora of mills/clothing factories that made sweaters, slacks, coats and clothing for the world.
At the other end of Allegheny Avenue, in Port Richmond, you had the busy Port of Philadelphia, which transported these products nation and world wide. Now, for the most part, all of this is gone.
Replacing it you have 'social service organizations' for the unemployed, homeless and damaged. You have cheap Chinese take out joints, dollar stores and, on what used to be an avenue of churches, you find struggling congregations desperate to rent out their facilities to whomever they can find.
It is a sad sight to see the numbers of men who have given up, and spend their days in a stupor of drugs or alcohol, and to see the pregnant young girls, sometimes already pushing another young one in a stroller, actually trying to hustle their bodies, or making their way to the welfare office to make sure their paper are in order so they can collect their check. Marriage is definitely a dying form of social unit with these lost souls.
Whereas in Kensington in the past the going was always a bit rough, you had the glue of family and the church to k\help keep things together. And the faces were White: ethnic Irish, Poles, Germans, Italians who shared, for the most part, a common culture that respected the family and feared God.
Now, the faces are Brown, Black and Yellow, and the only common denominator is the desire to purchase cheap consumer goods like cell phones, and to hustle money wherever it can be found.
This is the general reality, the beast from the Prole's eye view. But, before we abandon all hope, let it be said that some of the churches are still strong, some of the social workers do actually care, and, amazingly, the lessons from the Gospel still reach more than a handful.
As they say in AA & NA (Narcotics Anonymous) 'one day at a time'. Because, you see, for most on the ground down here, one can only put one foot in front of the other and keep on going, because, in this world, for these people, there are no promises. This is the world that the scum on Wall Street never see, the world that Washington DC has completely forgotten. Hell, our Congress allows the bodies of Vets killed in our criminal adventures overseas to be tossed in landfills and calls it a 'burial'. It is the gangsters who have brought us to this point who need to be buried.
Lord, forgive us, don't forget us, and have mercy on us...