Crime in Black Hearts by Jim Frederick Essay

Black Hearts was about the 2005-2006 deployment of the 101st‘s second brigade‘s 1-502nd (First Strike) to Iraq. The book more specifically honed in on Bravo Company and their first platoon’s decent into complete madness throughout the deployment. The 1-502nd and its commander Lt Col Kunk, was tasked with the mission of getting control of and hold the land in-between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Kunk was a particularly difficult man to get along with. He would explode and go on a tirade over just about anything, big or small. This caused serious problems at meetings when he only wanted things his way and would personally attack his commanders who he thought he could not trust. This area had been recently dubbed as the “Triangle of

They found out they were going to one of the most if not the most dangerous place in Iraq South Baghdad also known as the Triangle of Death. October 2005 2nd Brigade started to arrive Kunk dispersed the Companies: Bravo-West, Charlie-South, Alpha-central, and Delta-North. Kunk assigned Bravo and Charlie who he believed to be his best companies the mission he judged to be the toughest. The relief in place and transfer of authority was quite displeasing many men said that the National Guard unit 48th were quite beaten up and done for. They claimed the men looked beat and scared letting the enemy dictate where they could and could not go and had very little intel on the AO and surrounding areas to pass along to them. As everyone started to settle in to their AO Kunk started focusing on the overall mission to fight the insurgency and support the people and train the IA. Now focusing in more on Bravo, Goodwin took over the Yusufiyah area and was very

Among these leaders was Bravo Company’s 1st platoon’s SFC Robert Gallagher. The platoon endured terrible living conditions including no running water and filthy living space. These inadequate living conditions must be met with some relaxation on the standards they were expected to follow. Company leadership viewed this as a bribe to keep the soldiers in high spirits. In reality, they set the stage for the erosion of the morals the enlisted soldiers are supposed to possess. While the morals were being chipped away, so was the original plan the battalion had hoped to follow. Fragmentation orders became a pseudo-standard for the boys of Bravo Company. What had originally started as short-term overnight patrol bases turned into fortified traffic control points with the exception of any form of fortification other than in notion only. Despite the fact that platoon-level leadership requested for supplies they were repeatedly turned down. A major breakdown in the communication between the leadership created a loss in faith in the higher leadership for the lower-enlisted soldiers on the ground. Very soon into deployment, Bravo Company began to experience contact with unseen enemy forces. The enemy was able to engage and plant IED’s and cause casualties while remaining elusive. After the first few casualties within the company, the mission to start set up traffic control points was to begin. While conducting patrols down the road time and time

Black on black violence is an enormous problem in the African-American community. Living in a neighborhood that is mostly minority, many may have witnessed a lot of black on black violence. The black on black violence has continued to arise in many communities and continues to be a problem around the world. Black on black violence is ignorant, and many black Americans should be coming together instead of killing one another. African-Americans people should be helping each other achieve in the world, instead of putting one another.

The following piece of work will discuss racism within the criminal justice system by viewing the Black Lives Matter movement, the roles of law enforcement and how that effects citizens, and potential solutions to the problems in the system. Within our criminal justice system, it is evident that there is a problem by the ratio of blacks in prison, and the number of police brutality cases in the country.

The trend of African American males between the ages of 25 and 29 has seen a dramatic increase of incarceration. Attention has been focusing on areas of housing, education, and healthcare but the most prominent problem for African American males is the increase in the incarceration rate. African American males between the ages of 25 and 29 incarceration rate has been thought, by many, to be caused by economic factors such as under employment or unemployment, poor housing, lack of education, and lack of healthcare. Yet, others believe it is due to the imbalance of minorities within the criminal justice system, such as judges, lawyers, and lawmakers.

Over the last two years in the United States the African-American people have been fighting a war within our own backyards. The Washington Post reports that since January 2015, the police have shot and killed over 175 young black men ranging from ages 18-29; 24 of them were unarmed. On the flip side 172 young white men were killed, only 18 being unarmed. With these statistics there are similarities in the numbers but, blacks were killed at rates disproportional to their percentage of U.S population (1.Washington Post). Of all unarmed people shot and killed by police in 2015. With 40% being black men make up just 6% of the nation’s populations. In the wake of the killings of Mike Brown, Sandra Bland, Alton Sterling, and many more the world has been made more publicly aware of injustices black people have to handle when dealing with law enforcement. Crime in the black community is nothing new in the black community or should I say black on black crime. There is a bad stereotype that has been put on black people since slavery times that I believe has help fueled the violence between the police and my people.

The disproportionate numbers of African Americans in the prison system is a very serious issue, which is not usually discussed in its totality. However, it is quite important to address the matter because it ultimately will have an effect on African Americans as a whole.

Black Hearts tells the story of a few bad soldiers from 1st platoon, Bravo company of the 1-502nd Infantry Battalion of the 101st Airborne Division, that was plagued with toxic leadership and lack of control over soldiers. The book documents the events that led to the ultimate demise of the soldiers involved in the horrific incident that occurred on March 12, 2006. Four soldiers were arrested in the brutal murder of an Iraqi family, which was a result of the lack of leadership and structure these soldiers received. Black Hearts takes a deep look into what happened to this troubled platoon and what unfortunate events occurred during their deployment.

Reading this book I found it to be very intriguing. It is a story about men from the 101st Airborne Division’s legendary 502nd Infantry Regiment known as “the Black Heart Brigade. These men were deployed to the country’s worst and most unfavorable location at the most dangerous time. The platoon the book talks about the most would be the Bravo Company First Platoon. They were constantly in a rough patch throughout the entire book, facing constant leadership changed and trying to survive the Triangle of Death. Being in this hostile environment caused many of the soldiers to lose discipline and not even care about life or death for their own sake. Their mentalities were at an all-time low, causing them to do crazy things like rape a fourteen year old Iraqi girl and murdering her and her family cold blooded. It was a tragic deployment and we can clearly see and feel the motions they had during their time in Iraq.

African Americans are targeted by law enforcement more often than any other race (Toth, Crews & Burton, 2008). Because of this the term racial profiling was created to explain the process of targeting people for criminal activity because of race not evidence (Toth et al, 2008). African Americans are over represented in the criminal justice system based on their population amount compared to whites (Toth et al, 2008). African American males are incarcerated at a rate 9 times that of white males in most states, in others that number may be as high as 12 to 26 times more (Toth et al, 2008). Nationwide statistics show in most states 1 in 20 over the age of 18 are in prison, while 5 other states report 1 in 13 or 14 compared to the 1 in 180

Blackhearts is a novel describing the deployment of the 502nd Regiment, known as the “Blackheart Brigade”. The deployment was to the central region of Iraq to occupy and secure the area known as the “Triangle of Death”. This region was deemed so because of the escalating and unrelenting violence that occurred there during Saddam Hussein’s decline from power. The novel primarily tracks the movements of Bravo Company during the occupancy. The book itself is centralized around a war crime which took place during the company’s deployment. With the crime already well known publicly in the time following their deployment, author Jim Fredrick’s research into the event collectively accounts for each stage leading up to the

The researchers of this paper analyze data to determine the difference in recidivism rates among different states. From the data gathered, they determine what factors increase and decrease those rates. Some factors included are the type of crime, the difference in incentive structures, the degree of harshness in the prison, the sentence length, and use of work programs and rehab after prison. “This paper fills the gap and examines the relationship between recidivism rates and quality of formal institutions across the states.” (Hall 159). The intended purpose of the research was to show that further studies should be done to help control crime and recidivism. Recidivism rates can be lowered with the right approach.

“Most middle-class whites have no idea what it feels like to be subjected to police who are routinely suspicious,rude,belligerent,and brutal.”-Benjamin Spock

For hundreds of years society has sought a theory of criminality with which to strike back against the dark figure of crime. Theories of crime have always been heavily tinted by the social climate in which they were created. For example, until the 18th century Western European criminological thought was firmly rooted in Christianity, which considered crime the work of the Devil. Punishments were meted out not based on the merit of one 's actions, but to turn away the evil and reinforce order in a community. With the dawn of the Enlightment and the parting of the philosophical clouds a cast of venerable philosophers and scientists arrived to begin imparting their insights to the growing intellectual community. Men like Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham embraced humanist principles that declared all men equal, rational actors with the ability to make logical choices of their own free will. Thus Classical School criminologists advocated punishments that were rational, logical, and proportionate to the crime so as to outweigh its benefits and deter other rational actors from committing the same prohibited act. Early 20th century criminology was heavily influenced by Darwin 's Theory of Evolution and Herbert Spencer 's derivative philosophy of Social Darwinism. Criminologists of the Social Darwinism era were men like Cesare Lombroso, who used the pseudo-scientific principles of Atavism to promote his theory that criminality can be traced to genetic and physiological traits like