Perp , victim , or both ?

I am almost at a loss for words. I was watching the news, I think it was ch 5, to be honest I was so stunned by what I saw and heard, that the channel escapes me. A young thug goes in to a small grocery store on Prospect, pulls a gun to rob the guy behind the counter, the intended victim pulls his own gun, shoots the robber who stumbles outside and dies in the parking lot. A woman is being interviewed afterward, it was that short interview that left me stunned and almost unable to write or even utter a single word. Okay, not really that stunned, I've got plenty to say.

The woman is visibly upset, crying in fact. She tells the reporter how she ran to help the young man who was bleeding out in the parking lot. Then she says an amazing thing. " He ( the clerk) didnt have to kill him. He could have just wounded him." I sat staring at the television. This woman, heavy set, clearly poor, living in the epicenter of a Kansas City war zone, during one of the city's bloodiest seasons in recent memory, and she feels compassion for the guy who tried to rob the store. Wow, that is amazing. I doubt anyone short of Mother Theresa or the Baby Jesus could have mustered up the anguished compassion that this woman displayed. I actually backed the DVR up to hear it again, to be certain.


So I'm sitting staring at the TV , trying to wrap my head around what I've heard. One short sentence is running on a loop over and over in my mind, a small voice, just repeating the same thing over and over, in reaction to the Christ like compassionate words the woman spoke. All I could manage to say, at first just in my mind, and finally out loud, was.............Are you fucking kiddin me? He should have wounded him? Better yet, he should have just reasoned with him, or thrown gum drops and skittles at him. Maybe the group that was up the street holding a prayer vigil could have come down and prayed for the young guy. Clearly this young man was poor, underprivileged, probably no decent role models. The robbery victim should have just handed over the money, wished the young man godspeed, and hoped that he wouldn't kill him for his kindness. At the very least, the clerk could have just shot the gun out of the kids hand, like in the old Lone Ranger TV show.



Then I follow a link from TKC over to Alonzo Washington's site. He tossed out a two or three sentence comment on the story, here it is "KC Store clerk kills robber. If that's how it went down. The story sounds a little fishy. This store fought crime in a big way. Although, if you would have asked them to support anti-crime efforts in the area they would not have given you a dime." Once again I was momentarily struck mute. Seriously, The story sounds fishy, what does that even mean? A conspiracy, subterfuge, a cover up, what? The young man was trick or treating for UNICEF, the clerk shot him for no reason, slapped a throw away piece in the guys hand and shoves him out the door.


It all seems pretty cut and dried to me. Robber pulls gun, robber gets shot, robber stumbles outside, bleeds out on the sidewalk. It's a wasted life, and it's awful that someone died, but this little prick isn't the victim in all of this. I know Alonzo Washington works with the police, and some of the African American community. I realize that the woman who helped the dying would be robber was probably traumatized and in shock. So I'm not without some sympathy, that said I would be a total fraud if I ignored the giant fucking elephant in the room. It's called accountability, you know accepting responsibility for your actions. It's called laying the blame at the feet of the person responsible. I think having spent 5 years and change in prison, being accountable for my decisions, gives me some authority on the subject.

I dont care that the kid came up poor, I dont give a shit if the deck was stacked against him due to economic and racial disparity. Look, it's a fact that African Americans, in general are poorer and have less opportunity than whites. It's wrong, it's unfair, and it shouldn't be that way. And every single time some young inner city African American fucks up, someone will come to their defense, blame it on society, race, poverty, the cops, and there is a part of me that sympathizes, up to a point. But when you throw guns in to the mix, when someone gets shot, killed or harmed, my sympathy usually extends to the victim, not the gunman.



Anytime someone dies a violent death it is tragic, it's a waste, it's sad. That being said, if you decide to stick a pistol in a strangers face to take what is theirs, then you run the risk of getting killed. You automatically lose your right to play the sympathy card. My attitude has changed over the past year or so. You can go back through my archives and see the evolution. I am seeing things in a slightly different light. I am not so quick to give people a pass based on race or poverty. I'm beginning to think that maybe part of the problem is just that, a perpetual pass.

I know there will be the typical reactions from some folks who read this. There will be the racist morons who will take what I've said as an indictment upon every person of color breathing air, and there will be the knee jerk reaction from the other side of the coin, I'm just an out of touch middle aged white guy talking out of his ass about something he knows nothing about. Both reactions would be dead wrong. I dont have on blinders, no rose colored glasses here. The police dont do enough, the city government doesn't do enough, the school district doesn't do enough, white society as a whole does not do enough, and I'm sorry but the African American community in this city doesn't do enough either. Nobody is doing enough to change the way these young killers are coming up. Making excuses for them, giving them a pass and pretending that the killers are somehow victims by proxy, based on skin pigment and poverty, is complete and utter bullshit. Implying that something is fishy, tossing in a red herring just for shits and grins, also falls under the bullshit category.

The perpetual debt

Just a few blocks from my place a 57 year old man was found murdered. The guy was an employee of Sunfresh grocery in Westport. He was also an ex con with a fairly ugly track record. With convictions for Attempted Rape and Manslaughter under his belt, it is a little tough to garner much sympathy for the guy, even though he served his time, and seems to have lived within the confines of the law since his release in 2003. In time we may learn that he strayed back to his former criminal ways. His death also may have been as simple as a street robbery gone bad. Either way, it seems his past caught up to him. People who live a violent life, and commit atrocious acts, generally meet a similar end. If you must give it a name call it Karma.



This post isn’t really about the dead grocery store clerk, that story just got me thinking about life after prison. The popular misconception is you serve your time, get out and move on with your life, debt paid. It is more than a little naive to think that someone who has been in prison can ever lead a completely normal life, and even more naive to think the past wont bite that person in the ass on a regular basis. In other words, being released from prison is not the same as being released from your past.



The conscious decision that we make to break the law, to lead a particular lifestyle, is one that will stick with us for the rest of our lives. It will hinder the pursuit of a really good job. It will linger in the minds of people who knew us "Then" and they will always have doubt about our character. So to the people who think that parole means true release, it doesn’t. More importantly , it shouldn’t. For guys like the dead grocery store employee, it is a little hard to move beyond the fact that he was responsible for the loss of a life or attempting to rape a woman. Regardless of how stellar a life he may have led after the fact, his past will always loom over him, as it should.



In my case, I defrauded banks and other financial institutions. Does the fact that my victim was an FDIC insured bank rather than john q Citizen make me a better person than the guy who commits a murder? No it doesn’t. I like to think of myself as a better person than a murderer, not because my crime wasn’t brutal, but because my character wouldn’t allow me to kill someone in the commission of a crime. In the eyes of the law, I am no better or worse than the dead ex-con grocery clerk, I’m just another in a long line of numbers.



So if the debt is never truly paid, if an ex convict is never completely free of his past crimes, what’s the point in going straight. And if he goes straight what is to prevent him from walking around with a huge chip on his shoulder? The first question is easy, you go straight to avoid returning to prison. You can live the life for years and never get caught, but once you get that first conviction under your belt, they got your number. If you re-offend, you will go back to prison. So going straight for most of us that do, is a no brainer, its self preservation, pure and simple. Most people that serve time in prison come out bitter and pissed off. The resentment festers and grows and they spend the rest of their lives angry at a world that had the audacity to punish them only to turn around and tell them that the time they served was just a down payment on a debt that will remain in perpetuity, unpaid in full.



The easy route is the one that is too often taken. You get out, you struggle, you never get free of the past. So you end up angry and bitter at a world that by and large has done nothing to you.



There is no magic bullet for absolution, in fact absolution is unattainable. The best that you can hope for is to make amends, or a close facsimile of amends. My way of doing that is to write about my past. I put my picture up on this blog and I spill my guts for all to see. I don’t sugar coat things or try to soften the edges. I suppose this is my way of doing penance, instead of Hail Mary's, I write and expose myself. Hopefully in the process I reveal the human side of a cross section of society that most people only see in a negative light. Absolution is out of reach, but redemption is mine in the telling. That is why I do this.