A two year old girl is shot, according to the news she was hit in the spine. If she lives, IF, she lives, she may never walk, or run, or do any of the things a growing child is supposed to be about the business of doing. Her father was wounded but not seriously. There were an estimated 40 witnesses. According to the police the father won't cooperate, and those 40 witnesses suddenly went blind and mute, nobody is cooperating. There in lies a big part of the problem. How do the police help those who need it most, when their help isn't wanted? When 40 people stand mute after a baby is shot, what can the cops do? The same tired chorus will play out , like a top 40 tune that gets air play over and over. That tune might sound okay at first, then turns to incessant noise in its repetition. Crime on the east side is due to the cops inattention, it's the medias fault, its the JoCo soccer moms fault, it's because the victim was black, nobody cares. Play it again Sam. I don't for one second believe that the majority of the people living in the areas of the city where crime is most pervasive would sit idly by and refuse to cooperate with the police. But that is the perception when 40 people and the father of the victim clam up.
While we all share some culpability by virtue of living on this blue marble, the last time I checked nobody was driving through Waldo in a mini van, indiscriminately spraying people with a super soaker loaded with non fat no whip latte. Mostly young black men and boys are committing the majority of violent crime in this city. There's no getting around that fact. On a bad day they kill one another, on an especially bad day they kill someone unlucky enough to get between the shooter and the intended target. When the cops show up, nobody knows anything, nobody saw anything. Same old song and dance.
In a recent post TKC compared the Stop Snitching rhetoric of todays gangsta with Omerta, the code of silence practiced by Italian gangsters of days gone by. It was an accurate comparison. The similarity doesn't stop there. Todays thug parrots what they see on the big and small screen. Goodfellas, the Sopranos, Scarface, The Godfather. The drive by wasn't invented by some kid in a caprice sitting on ridiculously tall rims, it was invented by some mobbed up guy in a Model A. Stop Snitching isn't the brainchild of some thug from the hood, it's an abandoned code from another time , a different thug. The irony that is lost on these Johnny come latelys, the very people they strive to emulate would hold them in contempt based purely upon the color of their skin.
The murder rate which is on pace for another record setting year, the shootings that occur with such frequency they no longer hold shock value. Complex problems devoid of easy answers. One thing is certain, the problem isn't going to get any better when 40 people are willing to clam up in order to preserve some moronic code they cant even claim as their own. The problem won't get any better for the vast majority of decent folks in the most crime ridden areas, by laying the blame at the feet of everything and everyone except their own. As long as people are willing to turn a blind eye to the predators who prowl their streets, things will only get worse. You can blame the cops and the media until you are blue in the face, but that won't fix what ails the most crime ridden areas of this city. That's a fact, and it ain't racism, it's realism.
Shouldn't this "father" have his child (if she lives) taken away from him? There is a child endangerment sitution here, no?
ReplyDeleteI don't understand all this "press charges" business. The guy must have admitted he knew who the shooter was in order to refuse to press charges, right? What is obstruction of justice if not refusing to identify a known assailant? Let's say someone shoots a police officer and another person witnesses it. If the witness admits he knows who did it but won't id him, does that mean that is his right? I really don't understand and wish someone would explain the law to me.
Well, in this case, the first thing the cops can do is shoot all 40 of those who won't cooperate. For starters...
ReplyDeleteI only see two reasons to not name the shooters:
ReplyDeleteYou know who they are, and you are scared that they will come after you next,
or
You know that "street justice" will prevail and that some of dads friends will be looking for the shooters.
Did I miss any otehr possibilities here? Is there any other reason why witnesses won't talk? Is it really street cred to be a not talk?
no I think you hit it on the head, there will be some kind of payback, but its street cred as well. Lets call it a gumbo of stupidity.
ReplyDeleteDear Mr. Miscreant: Thanks for your thoughtful posting. I think that, in light of the serious wounding of a toddler, it is time to abandon "political correctness" and speak the truth. KCMO right now is caught up in the same sort of "de-policing" that ravaged Cincinnati after the 2001 race riots and NYC after the Tawana Brawley controversy of 1987-1989. The men and women of the KCPD, like the cops in those other two cities, are afraid to do their jobs in black neighborhoods for fear of being charged with racism--and they know, given the way that the city's establishment mishandled the Salva tragedy, that if charged with racism they face at best prompt dismissal without even a pretense of due process or fair media coverage--at worst they can be sent to a federal prison on civil rights charges--witness the fate of the officer in the Oakland subway shooting who is being shipped off to jail as rapidly as humanly possible by a city establishment terrified of a race riot if they don't do so. The price of ending violence in KCMO is brutally simple: The officers of the KCPD have to be assured that they, too, are entitled to due process and fair-minded treatment by the media--if the city's elites don't want to do that, they will almost certainly face a continuation of violence. Sincerely and Respectfully, Ernest Evans
ReplyDeleteDEE
ReplyDeleteactually I think the two idiots in the Salva case Should have been fired. They didnt follow policy, the acted like morons. The Brawley case was an instance of another moron, Al Sharpton, doing what Al does. I dont think the police in KC are afraid to do their job, I think they are saddled with a job that is difficult and near impossible, but not because they are afraid, but for the reasons I listed in this post. Your comment, which you are welcome to make, is almost word for word the same rhetoric you send me in your weekly emails. I think you are barking up the wrong tree, but your welcome to keep barking.
Midtown
ReplyDeleteExcellent post. Too many witnesses who don't see a thing. Same old story every time. UMKC student wrong place wrong time outside KofC hall in Waldo gunned down 30-40 people outside no witnesses. 30 people at a party on 29th street -shooting, death, no witnesses. Seriously - why should the police even bother trying to investigate. Maybe they should just publish the names of these 4o people who didn't see anything - at least the world would know who the cowards are.
Man this stuff just pisses you off. And the east side wonders why no one wants to help them.
ReplyDeleteLet's hear some BLACK suggestions on how this specific shooting could have been prevented (in realistic, doable terms, not Sharptonspeak), and how to catch the shooter.
Now you made me sad. Poor baby girl, it's such a shame she was unlucky enough to be born on the wrong side of town.
ReplyDeleteI don't know the first thing about fixing any of this mess. How do you undo fifty years of ghetto and alter the desolate mindset that prevails in these places?