Blaming Internet Cafes For Violence

from the let's-see,-who-can-we-blame? dept

I doubt many people are surprised by this, but a Los Angelese city councilman is calling for an investigation into internet gaming cafes due to the violence that has been reported near some of them. This appears to be a typical "blame the venue" action that probably is worth a few votes with "concerned parents" who don't actually understand the issue. Clearly, these are gang related issues. The internet cafes are just a place. However, instead of actually doing something about youth gang violence, LA will now probably move to shut down internet cafes. All this means is that the violence will occur elsewhere, and kids who were actually using the cafes to play games or surf the web will end up on the streets as well.
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  • identicon
    Basemonger, 9 May 2003 @ 3:56pm

    investigation into internet gaming cafes

    I live in Winnipeg, and own / manage an internet gaming cafe. The only problem we ever had was a few guys tried to hide stashes for their freiends. We made it clear that they were not welcome. The only other incident was theft. Not much, but I think that the LA councelman is making a stretch, its not Internet Gaming cafes that are the problem, it's ANY place that teens meet. They're breeding ground for social interaction. Video games have little to do with it unless theres bad parenting and faulty wired kids or even peer pressure involved.

    Good luck solving that one.

    The other co-owner here and I see it this way: We'd rather have them playing video games than doing somthing illegal.

    And no, we don't have grand theft auto vice city here. :)

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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