Last night I was awakened by a burst of gunfire outside my bedroom window at midnight; it was quickly followed by a second and then the sound of a car driving off. My wife rolled over and touched my arm -- "Was that gunfire?"
It's like the sound of a car crash. Once you've really heard it you can't mistake it for much else. I've heard gunfire in my life, once had the chance to spend an afternoon at a gun range. And this would make the third time I've heard someone shot to death.
Karen calls nine-one-one; the line is busy. She tries again. "Is this about the shooting on Derby?" She wasn't the first to phone it in. People in our neighborhood have gotten a lot more interested in calling the cops about this kind of thing since the last murder on our block.
We had emergency vehicles there within minutes. I stayed in bed; if I had nothing to contribute I didn't want to get in the way. Karen went to find out what was going on; she lives here and she needs to know. We've got different ideas as to what constitutes our business -- in this case I think both positions were legitimate.
The details she returned with? There's a body on the street in front of the house next door. There's a bullet hole in the front window of that house; the glass was double-glazed and the shot failed to penetrate the second pane. That surprised me. But what didn't surprise me was the real meat of the matter.
The victim was a young black man. Just like the last time.
I overheard one of the neighbors when he saw the body and became extremely upset, cursing and thrusting himself into the middle of things; when the cops put him in a patrol car he screamed, "You'd put a white boy in the front!"
Did this guy really need to be arrested? Would it have happened if he had been white? Did he really believe the cops would let a white offender ride shotgun -- or did he just need to bring race to the front of the moment? It was ugly all the way around and there was something about it that seemed almost like an allegory or a cartoon -- the hidden meanings were right there on the surface.
Dude is arrested seemingly for being black and complains that if he were white the arrest would have been a nicer experience. What can you do with that?
The alienation between law enforcement and the local black community is not going to make this situation any easier to address. The last murder on our block was never solved. The rumor was that it was drug-related; the victim had friends and relatives protest in the neighborhood explicitly stating that it was not drug related.
And that one went down the same as this. Someone in a car shoots someone on the street and drives off.
What can you do with that?
2 comments:
Dear Sean - race is a difficult subject. i'm half/Egyptian and half/Irish and was a victim of racism at school. Where do you live that there is gun violence and drugs. I live in a village just outside Hull,Yorks. England. Most of the crime is in the city in Hull. Your blog may help fuel ideas for my creative writing course which I start at Hull University in September. I'm a student on the 2nd year of a degree course.
It must be scary living somewhere where there is gun violence. How do you relax? I have a psychiatric condition and I'd feel very on edge if I lived somewere like you. Also as a woman I can walk to the local all-night supermarket as it is very quiet hee and there are police cars around. I always stick to residential roads and know that the staff would protect me when I sit outside the supermarket with a cup of coffee and have a cigarette, at night when I've got insomnia.
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