The most improved writer this week is Leonard Pitts (Miami Herald).  Pitts has continued to milk the boot camp hype and spin to support his views more than anybody. On the surface, it's a civil rights worker's dream come true.  A black kid dies bringing back memories of Emmitt Till who was killed by whites a half century ago.  A video tape as dramatic as the Rodney King beating video appears  showing the boy being 'beaten by a mob of 'cops.''  And for icing on the cake the medical examiner rules it death by natural causes. And charges of coverup abound at every turn. But anything that's too good to be true usually isn't.

I have no complaint about Pitts articles about racism being a problem. such as his latest, "Racism behind treatment of black kids  of 5/20/2006."  It's only when he goes from generalities to specific claims about the boot camp case that he loses me.

by LEONARD PITTS  It was also about the death of Martin Lee Anderson, an unresisting 14-year-old black kid who was hit, choked and restrained by guards in a Panama City, Fla., "boot camp." The abuse and the disproportionate number of black kids who wind up in those places was, I said, a legacy of the nation's historic tendency to use its justice system to control a population it finds frightening and inconvenient. I repeat: "And Justice For Some," a 2000 study co-sponsored by the Justice Department, found that a black drug defendant is 48 times more likely to be jailed than a white one with the same record.  The Report of the National Criminal Justice Commission," blacks account for 13 percent of all regular drug users, but 35 percent of those arrested, 55 percent of those convicted and 74 percent of those imprisoned for drug possession. Responsibility is a two-way street. ====================================== Mr. Pitts' article above demands answers and I support him.  But the boot camp case does not apply to the above deplorable issues. Bay County did not put the juvenile in boot camp to control him.  His mother put him in the boot camp because she could not control him. The rumor is she kicked the son out of the house two years earlier so he moved in with his grandmother.  After he stole her SUV and wrecked it she kicked him out of her house also.  Now the kid has no place to go to.  So she asks the boot camp head to take him in over the officer's objections. Now she's suing the officer for racism for killing her baby. Regardless of the boot camp case outcome, we still have to address Pitts' questions. Why is a black drug defendant 48 times more likely to be jailed than a white one with the same record?  That, dear people, is blatant racism, and we all have to join Mr. Pitts until this is corrected. And we need to join the NAACP June 3 at Bay High Stadium to work together to address local needs of at risk youths.  And at risk parents.  If you want your kids to grow up healthy and  happy, you have to assure that all of the other neighborhood kids get to grow up healthy and happy also.  It takes a community to raise a kid. If I wind up voting for Hiliary over this issue, I'll never be able to live with myself.  Let's hope it never leads to that.    Stan