Terminated ...

The German Army trainer who told a soldier to imagine that he was shooting at African Americans in the Bronx has been dismissed, according to this 1010 WINS report.
Readers of the West Bronx Blog have posted some interesting comments in response to our original posting on this. Check it out and add your thoughts.

German Bronx Dis is Only Most Recent in Long Line

Thanks to YouTube, the Bronx and the world was made aware this weekend of a German military training exercise where soldiers were told to imagine African Americans in the Bronx exiting a van before firing off their machine guns.

But anyone who has a Google Alert set for Bronx will learn relatively quickly that our borough is frequently used for target practice by clueless people trying to make a point in violent contexts. The Norwood News ran an editorial about exactly this last July (scroll down page to 2nd editorial). Here are a couple of excerpts:

Michael Hart, the Liberal Party candidate for state parliament in Burleigh, Australia, “has rejected suggestions that Burleigh is becoming the ‘Bronx’ of the city,” according to a local paper there.

“We are certainly having some trouble with out-of-control youth gatherings, but I don’t think we have reached that stage yet,” he told the paper. ...

A year ago, a Swiss paper ran an article about training sessions for people concerned about rising crime in Swiss cities. The headline was, “Safety lessons in a virtual Bronx.”

It's good that Bronx BP Adolfo Carrion has invited German military and government officials to tour the borough; we just worry he might have to hire a staffer exclusively to arrange the visits of a steady stream of less-than-enlightened representatives of foreign governments.