Rich,

You are WAY off base! I was born and raised in New Britain, and have lived here all my life. My kids went to the same public schools my wife and I did.

My wife teaches first grade in the single most depressed area in town. The vast majority of her kids are minorities, many of whom speak English as a second language. Even the few white kids in her class are primarily immigrants from Poland, again, ESL. She got a kid in yesterday who is from Morocco, doesn't speak a WORD of english! What's she supposed to do with him?

I am a Youth Services Officer for DCF at the only state juvenile correctional facility, the CT Juvenile Training School in Middletown, formerly known as Long Lane. I have worked with the worst 200 teenagers in the state for the past 6 years, and I have met their parents, and know the neighborhoods in which they were born and raised.

Bridgeport is not the only city like that; Hartford, (ever been up the Ave, or out in the Ville? Ask Jimmy, he was going up to the Chill & Grill in Peoples Forest, somebody told him to take 44, he got into Hartford and turned around and went home!) New Haven, Waterbury, Willimantic, even in towns like Bristol, Meriden, Middletown, New London...my own hometown of New Britain... I'm sure I'm forgetting many. And some of the rurual towns are economically very depressed as well, albeit not as violent or plagued by crime the same as the inner cities are.

If you think CT is Madison, or Avon, or Greenwich, YOU are the one who needs to get out. I'll be glad to take you on a tour. Pack the gauge and some spare clips!

Respectfully,

Jim