the schutzzonen - if it doesn’t work, spread it
we covered vienna’s first “schutzzone” at the karlsplatz before. the idea was to keep the resident junkies away from the kids who go to school there. not a bad idea, except that there never was a real problem to begin with. when I was a teen, i often wasted time in the subway area there, and no one ever bothered me - i don’t want to say that there’s no annoyances, i once (for the first and last time) tried to use the public restrooms there, but failed because one of the “kids of the karlsplatz” was bleeding all over the toilets, but no one even talked to me, let alone tried to sell me anything. the whole deal probably went down because the parents of said kids were frightened and/or offended - i should mention that the school in question is a protestant private school, visited by the children of middle-middle class philistines.
in the 6 weeks of the zone, there were 25 send-offs and 9 violations of said send-offs - 8 of them by the same guy, who now faces charges of either 2880 € or 4 months in jail. did the whole thing clean up the area? you bet it didn’t. the complete junkie/homeless “scene” is now located at the telephone booths approximately 2 meters behind the safe zone. big deal.
but instead of seeing that this is maybe not the best way to solve the whole situation, we get another safe zone, this time the high school diefenbachgasse and the surrounding area, including the subway station längenfeldgasse. the zone is running monday to friday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and is planned to run till june 30th.
so, what’s next then? making vienna a safe zone, and forcing everyone with a drug problem or without a home to relocate to lower austria? why not make the whole continent a safe zone and throw those people into the ocean, while we are at it?
by the way, the facts of this rant were borrowed from this article at the kurier, which also kindly reminds us that “the (heroine and cocaine) dealers (around the längenfeldgasse area) are mostly colored people which ignored the police presence so far.”
so, to whoever made this fantastic observation:
if you can judge a wise man
by the color of his skin
then mister you’re a better man than i
(aerosmith - living on the edge)
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err, did i get this right? suppose you were an austrian police officer, and you encountered a person of whom you _know_ that it’s a heroine or cocaine dealer, then what you would do would be saying “please please relocate a little”? i mean, i’m all for granting people easy access to neurotoxins, but that’s not exactly the mission statement of the police, is it?
Well, actually, it is. Not in these words, I guess. The whole deal is about shooing away supposed(!) dealers and junkies from the kids. Because knowing someone is a drug dealer and being able to prove it are different things.