You may or may not have noticed that I have been serving up MM lite lately. Over the past couple of weeks Ive come down off my soap box regarding crime on the East side of the city. While there have been killings, shootings and stabbings aplenty, to be honest I get tired of writing about it. I mean I haven't really been doing more than stating the obvious and peppering it with snide remarks. Which is not to say that I don't care or take lightly the constant war zone atmosphere east of Troost.
I was going to write about the woman and her brother who were shot, the woman killed, in the front yard of their home, while the woman's 2 children looked on. Anyway you slice it, whatever the motive, that is some horrendous shit for a kid to deal with. This would normally be the point where I spend a couple of hundred words expounding on the contemptuous scum bags who perpetrated this heinous act. Again stating the obvious.
This time is different for a couple of reasons, and of those two reasons there is a common thread that links one with the other, Inundation. The truth is every single day there is someone in the city either being killed or seriously fucked up, and after so much news of it, it just looses its sting.
There just isn't anything left to say that hasn't been said. So I was sitting here looking at the lit screen in front of me, trying to figure out some new way of saying the same old thing, and coming up blank. Then the news came on, KCTV 5. It was breaking news out of some piss poor apartment complex on the east side, someone had been killed. Nothing new there, but it was the shot from the news camera that caught my eye. it apparently didn't dawn on the reporter or the anchors, they failed to mention it or comment on it, but there it was. Inundation in action.
The shot from the camera showed an area wrapped in yellow crime scene tape. Cops were milling about, the reporter was doing his or her best to sound like a real journalist. Notice I cant even tell you if the reporter was male or female. The shot from the camera, at least in my minds eye, was so arresting that it had my complete attention. Just feet in front of the crime scene tape, about a half dozen kids, 10 or 12 years old,were tossing a football around. Now that is inundation at work. These kids have seen this shit happen day in and day out, to the point it doesn't even merit moving away from it. It reminded me of news footage from some war torn country. You know , the scenes on the news of some kid in the middle east playing next to a building pockmarked with bullets.
And it was that short blip on the news that pretty much sums up the crime problem today. It is here to stay and probably only going to get worse. If you ever found yourself wondering how a particular perp could commit a particularly heinous crime, you need look no further than the example I've just given. When you grow up in the midst of violence in what is tantamount to a war zone, it's just business as usual.
Somewhere I read (can't remember where) that there have been more murders in the U.S. during the time of the Iraq war than U.S. soldiers that have died in the war.
ReplyDeleteWhere are the demonstrations, the outrage?