The Gothamist headline, copped from the NY Post says, “Police Bust Massive Rockaway Drug Ring”

But the content suggests neither “massive” nor “ring,” in the Don Corelone sense of the word, anyway. First, lets talk weight:

Police seized 41 bags of crack, 230 bags of marijuana, and smaller amounts of heroin and Oxycontin.

That’s referred to as “a decent weekend” here Where Todd P Won’t Be HQ. As for personnel:

Officers cuffed 45 suspects including members of the Bloods, Crips, and Money Over Bitches gangs.

So what’s happened is, NYPD — after a protracted investigation that I’m pretty sure I could’ve handled over the course of an afternoon — has managed to find 45 dime-bag dealers in the Hammel Houses, a public housing complex in The Rockaways. Its a lot of people, in terms of sheer numbers, but not really all that noteworthy considering the Hammel Houses are essentially a miniature city unto themselves:

Hammel Houses on the Rockaway peninsula in Queens consists of 14 buildings, 6 and 7-stories high with 712 apartments housing some 1,994 residents. Completed April 30, 1955, the 14.16-acre complex is bordered by Beach 81st and Beach 86th Streets, Hammels and Rockaway Beach Boulevards.

So 45 small time crooks in a community of nearly 2,000 people… that’s the approximate rate of return police get running drug dogs up and down the hallways of my high school on the west side of Milwaukee. The difference is, as far as I can tell, that there is no shit tabloid equivalent to the Post/Daily News in Milwaukee, and the real newspaper, such as it is, doesn’t have time or inclination to cover non-entities like this.

So why all the fuss here in the Big Apple? The Post/Daily News emphasize this trash because they emphasize every piece of trash that vilifies poor people or can somehow stir the “us vs. them” pot, where “us” equals their readership which informal observation suggests mainly consists of overweight moustached white men, aged 40-70 and “them” equals anyone who lacks the means to buy a paper. The perfect venue for some good old fashioned scare-mongering. The Post is second to none in that department, and, as always, readers swarm to lap that shit up. One comment, from the Post:

Sharpton, where are you, your brothers need you. Why is it your never around when your people need you, but only when whites are involved?

You’ll find similarly ignorant, though less venomous, commentary in the Daily News.

So, to recap: innocuous drug bust –> victory trumpeting by police –> picked up by crummy daily –> hyperbolized –> misinformed readers figure everyone in the projects deals drugs (which is really code for minorities dealing drugs) –> racism lives another day.