Camden's Police Is Certainly Not A Little Passeri

This is more or less inspired by my back and forth with fellow Twitch streamer YourStarling over on Twitter these past few weeks, and let me begin that I totally get that she is very passionate about her stance on things, and like with everyone in this world, it does not mean she's wrong or that I'm right, or that I'm wrong and she's right. We all have our different points of view on various situations, we all want to see things improve, however the road to get there is not always clear cut.

Now obviously the topic of Defunding The Police, a battle cry of many protestors and politicians in the United States is triggering bit of conversation in the wake of everything that has happened since the murder of George Floyd up in Minnesota, but the thing is, you don't want to Defund the Police in a period of social unrest, you want to start rebuilding it.

Just about seven years ago, my home town of Camden, New Jersey fired everyone associated with the city police at that time and began the long process of rebuilding it from the ground up. It was a complete wipe out of the old guard and the union that basically was holding up progress. In the time since then, I have seen more police officers patrolling neighborhoods, crime has dropped over 40% since, complaints of the police using excessive force has dropped from over 60 complaints in 2015 to only 3 in 2019. Hell the obvious sign there was a difference made is that I don't hear gun shots every night anymore. The police are now a staple of the community, there is no where near the animosity seen towards out police force as compared to what's seen across the Delaware River in Philadelphia as of late. It's really a night and day approach, 

Now is Camden's more community approach perfect, well no, nothing is perfect, but compared to complete anarchy in letting citizens police themselves and leaving things as they were, Camden certainly is giving an example of how to do things. We went from having half the police force with none of the proper training to one that specializes in deescalation of trouble, after all there has to be a reason why over 130 other law enforcement agencies are looking for new ways of doing things, because it's clear the old ways aren't working and you don't want chaos in the streets. And sure as a city Camden has a long way to go, but guess what, we're on our way and with our improving police department that is changing with the times, we'll get there.

Of course that's just my opinion

How Sony Killed My Interest In Console Gaming For 6 Years

For many, their first video game console was a Nintendo Entertainment System in the 1980s, for me, however the first time I ever played a video game was on an IMB Tandy 1000 from Radio Shack and I didn't get my first console until 1994, when my father got me and my younger bother a Sega Genesis. We had a few games, things like Sonic The Hedgehog 2, Ghostbusters, Mortal Kombat 3, Alien 3, Street Fighter II (the one with Cammy, Fei Long, T-Hawk and DeeJay). Now I was always more of a Computer gamer, as I had the mentioned Tandy 1000, and then was given a Compaq in 1992/3 so I could play Star Trek 25th Anniversary and a lot of the Lucas Film Games... but there was something cool about console gaming that I liked, where I didn't have to be sitting at my desk to play games, I could be in front of the TV which had a bigger screen than my computer at the time.

So fast forward a few years, my PC gaming was upgraded to an IBM PC with Windows 95 and there were plenty of Sega ports of games for it that I could play, so it wasn't until 1998/9 when I was given PlayStation to replace my Sega Genesis which developed a bad fault. The PlayStation was awesome, I didn't have to worry about my PC being able to run games and there were a lot of stuff on the original PlayStation that appealed to me, like Grandia, Chrono Cross, WWF Attitude, Rival Schools and others. When the PlayStation 2 was announced, I was like whoa, a whole new system that could also play my old games. I didn't waste time, hell I was in the middle of my failed military career and got a PlayStation in the Fall of 2001, making it the first time I bought a console on my own. Again the great appeal was being able to get the new games while still being able to use my old ones. This was really damn cool to me.

And I stood with the PS2 all the way up until 2008, two years after the initial release of the PS3 which I in the summer of that year, primarily because I was really into the WWE at the time, and the PS2 version of SmackDown vs RAW 2008 was a little... underwhelming. A big reason why I was so hesitant of getting a PS3 at the time was because I could use my PS2 games with it... unless I basically bought them again from the PlayStation Network Store (such was the case with Beyond Good and Evil), this was really a kick in the crotch for me. The only saving grace was that the PS3 could still run the PS1 era games that I had so there was that... but man, My PS3 lasted until October of 2013, one month before the release of the PlayStation 4...

Which was when I basically said fuck console gaming. You see I saw the news that the PS4 would not be backwards compatible with any games from the previous three eras of the system. We went from having the best way to do things with the PS2... to the disappointment of the PS3... and now the PS4 wouldn't have any way to play the games I purchased. No what Sony basically did was selling HD remasters of PS2 games.. which people bought and that carried over into how the planned to do things with the PS4. You want to play your favorite games from the previous three generations... well now you'll have to purchase them AGAIN. Now I have no problem buying multiple versions, but what I am against is being exploited as a consumer... and Sony basically was giving the big fuck you to loyal customers.

Obviously Microsoft responded to this by selling games digitally from its catalog to have them be backwards compatible, so folks could play Original Xbox on their Xbox 360, and of course games from both systems on on their Xbox One's.. or if they still had the disc they could (what a shock) insert the disc into their system and a re-license of the game was assigned so someone didn't have to buy the game again. But since I was not an Xbox gamer, this didn't appeal to me at the time... because well Sony pissed me off that much.

So what brought me back to console gaming... well I have to credit the likes of Iceman7667 and Lunar_Princess for that. Iceman who has been apart of the my Wednesday night streams over the past several months, wanted me to join in playing The Division 2 was a big reason why I went with the Xbox One. And Lunar_Princess has teased me about just playing PC games and missing out on all the stuff that was on console only. Microsoft's backward compatible library also was a huge factor for me as well, Now will I give Sony another chance with the PS5... well only if it can match what Microsoft does with allowing for players to use their existing PS1/2/3 disc to get the latest version of the older games other than that I'm just not seeing that in my future....

But what about Nintendo... well... as a Streamer I'm always looking for ways to Switch things up and added to my lineup. The biggest drawback with Nintendo is that all the games I would want to play are basically the first party in house developed games. But maybe we'll address that at some point in the future.