Am I sensing something here? I was just listening to ABC Nightline where they labeled the Omaha shooter as being troubled and trying to figure out where they went wrong.
Yet, the killers of Sean Taylor are being labeled thugs and everything under the sun.
Why aren't they all being labeled one in the same: if one is troubled, then they all should be troubled. If one is a thug, then they all should be a thug.
It's just the usual example of a double standard to me. They (the media, we know who its controlled by) is always going to make "their stories" seem different than they make anyone else's. Not just blacks, but any other minority for that matter.
As a people (you know, before we disintegrated into the beasts that we've unleashed today) were civilized before slavery. We weren't savages. Everyone got a fair chance.
Showing posts with label Blacks Killing Each Other Juvenile Justice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blacks Killing Each Other Juvenile Justice. Show all posts
Friday, December 7, 2007
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
'Our young men are dying' Pt 2
BY ANDREA ROBINSON
arobinson@MiamiHerald.com
Dwight Jackson longs for those days 30 years ago when young black men settled their disputes the old-fashioned way: with loud trash talk and occasional fisticuffs. When the dust- ups were over, the combatants walked away and went home.
Not anymore. Simple disputes now too often turn deadly.
Jackson, 47, sees it in the back room of the Liberty City mortuary where he makes mangled bodies presentable for public viewing. Jackson, owner of Richardson Mortuary, receives at least 10 young, black homicide victims a month; that's more than there were, say, 20 years ago, other longtime employees there remark.
''Inner-city [boys] are being killed over silly stuff . . . built on hate and envy,'' he said, shaking his head.
Forty years after the Kerner Commission report -- in the wake of the Watts riots in Los Angeles -- tried to sort out why young black men were killing each other, Jackson keeps wondering how things could have gotten so bad in South Florida and the nation.
A new, first-time Florida initiative seeks to find the answers and save at-risk black males -- who state Sen. Frederica Wilson, D-Miami, calls ``an endangered species.''
''This goes beyond public safety and prevention. It's public health. It goes to our mental condition,'' said state Rep. Frank Peterman, a St. Petersburg Democrat.
Peterman and Wilson sponsored legislation to create the Council on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys, which former Gov. Jeb Bush signed into law last June and which first met in February. The council, located in the Attorney General's office and budgeted at $200,000 per year, will study a litany of condi- tions that negatively affect black males: escalating homicide, arrest and incarceration rates, poverty, violence, low income, the breakdown of the family structure and school performance and health issues.
And it will produce yet another report -- like so many other commissions have done around the nation over the past 40 years -- that will propose ways to change the driving forces that have left so many black males in prison or dead from Miami and Fort Lauderdale to Orlando and Jacksonville.
Wilson said the council will recommend legislative action to address the issues of concern. The first report is due by the year's end.
Peterman promises the Florida commission won't be a ''touchy-feely exercise'' and said it will examine the breakdown in the black family and the heavy toll it is taking on males. To do that, it will need solid information of the sort requested by council chairman Levi Williams last week. In a teleconference on Wednesday, Williams, a Fort Lauderdale attorney, asked the heads of state agencies for data on racial and ethnic disparities.
SCOPE OF THE PROBLEM
Black males, Wilson said, are like Florida's panthers and manatees: dying young and at the mercy of human predators.
''We're so disproportionately affected by all of this [black-on-black male violence]. There are no men available to teach black boys how to become responsible men,'' Wilson said.
That sentiment is echoed by Beverly Colson Neal, executive director of the Florida NAACP office in Orlando: ``Our young men are dying. This didn't just start.''
Florida is among a handful of states, including Ohio and Indiana, to have panels looking for ways to stop the rising violence that is a festering national problem, one the U.S. Conference of Mayors also hopes to tackle. The mayors' meeting was held last month in Miami -- an appropriate venue to discuss violence because South Florida is a region under siege.
Consider:
• Figures provided by local law enforcement agencies lay out the scope of the carnage. Broward had 95 homicide victims in 2006, up 50 percent from the previous year. Miami-Dade had 258 homicides last year, up 40 percent from 2005. About 165 of those victims in Miami-Dade and Broward were black, the overwhelming majority male and younger than 35.
• Another telling figure, Wilson said, that spurred creation of Florida's council: Black males make up 51.2 percent of inmates in state prisons and 62 percent of the jail population. She cited figures from the Florida Department of Corrections.
• Nationally, it is difficult to determine overall numbers of black-on-black crime because police agencies do not keep such statistics. But in 2004 -- the latest year for which figures are available -- victimization rates for blacks were six times higher than rates for whites. Rates for black perpetrators were seven times higher.
THE CAUSES
There are a myriad of reasons, authorities say, for the uptick in local violence: poverty, a population spike for young men, police departments stretched thin on the streets, a proliferation of weapons. Police officials also lay blame on two key federal policy changes: the end of a ban on assault weapons, which put more high-powered guns on the streets; and the loss of funding for community policing and other programs that put more officers into neighborhoods.
Neal and fellow NAACP member Jamal Rose also blame much of the violence on the breakdown of black communities. Gone are many of the athletic and after-school activities that gave children something to do, Rose said. Gone too are many of the mom-and-pop stores, often replaced by chain convenience stores.
''The funds are being drawn out of the neighborhood but not being put back in,'' Rose said.
Too many successful blacks have left their old stomping grounds in favor of integrated suburban areas, Neal noted, leaving the poorest children often living among jobless felons recently released from prison.
Recognizing that, several successful blacks try to serve as role models for children. ''We know the challenges. Those stats are disturbing,'' said Willie Johnson, leader of a mentoring program at Koinonia Worship Center in Hallandale Beach's Carver Ranches community.
Johnson said the church and other segments of the black community must step up and fix the problem: ``The village ain't doing too good right now.''
For Jackson, the mortuary owner, the search for answers starts a lot closer than the mythical village: ``It's deep-rooted, and it starts in the home.''
Jackson sponsors and coaches Optimist football and basketball teams. He figures if boys are busy with school or sports, they have less time to get involved in seamier pursuits. Other civic leaders have hosted town hall meetings and teamed with local police departments in gun-buyback programs.
But individual efforts like these won't be enough to change things, social scientists say. What's needed, they say, is help from the system -- and that's something the new state council could eventually help.
For example, Harry Holzner, Georgetown University professor of public policy, says a sustained, comprehensive effort that begins with educating and mentoring boys as young as 3 years old is required so they don't fall off the radar screen when they reach adolescence.
''When they leave high school, you can plug them into services,'' he said.
FIRST-HAND VIEW
For young black men who have no formal job skills and no high school diploma, chances are slim of landing a job with a livable wage and benefits. Many of them don't expect traditional employment, said Miami native Gene Gesch, 27. Growing up in the inner city exposes them to deadly shootings. By the teen years, he says, they're desensitized to death and destruction.
Gesch should know. Instead of getting a low-wage job at a fast-food joint when he was a teenager, he opted for fast bucks. He started as a lookout for drug dealers, the way his Overtown and Liberty City friends did.
''That's the mentality of the youth,'' said Gesch. ``They want a Benz, a 745 -- the only way these young children think they're gonna get it is sell to work for someone else, selling dope on the corner or as a look out.''
Gesch came of age during the 1990s, when the infamous John Doe drug gang ruled the area. Gang members were his friends. He found a role model in a guy named ''Convertible Bert,'' a local drug dealer who drove around Liberty City wearing flashy garments. Gesch wanted the same things. He saw himself as a popular poet/rap artist who also had a fatalistic bent.
``I didn't care. I was Tupac . . . it was you and me against the world.''
That attitude landed Gesch in Florida's adult prison system at 16. He served five years for aggravated assault with a firearm. He was in solitary confinement a lot, he says, because he often got into fights with other inmates.
Salvation of sorts came when he transferred to the Dade Correctional Institution. A pair of older inmates believed he was better than his past behavior indicated, and they directed him to the prison library. There he was eventually inspired to turn his life around. He even became a mentor: He lectured middle- and high-school students in Wilson's 5000 Role Models of Excellence Project, counseling them not to follow his path.
After prison, Gesch moved hours away from Miami, to St. Lucie County.
He said kids have to know they can make money legitimately instead of selling dope -- if they change their environment. In his former community, he said, ``they have no hope in their mind.
``They see people get robbed, get killed. A lot of people have been to prison in that community. It's real hard. It's an ongoing struggle.''
Success stories such as Gesch's are the ones that council member Christopher Norwood of Miami Lakes wants to highlight as the group does its work.
''Too often we concentrate on the failures of black youth and do our research based on the failures. We don't spend a lot of time focusing on the successes,'' Norwood said. ``There's not enough research on the resiliency in black men. That's what I want our research to focus on.''
arobinson@MiamiHerald.com
Dwight Jackson longs for those days 30 years ago when young black men settled their disputes the old-fashioned way: with loud trash talk and occasional fisticuffs. When the dust- ups were over, the combatants walked away and went home.
Not anymore. Simple disputes now too often turn deadly.
Jackson, 47, sees it in the back room of the Liberty City mortuary where he makes mangled bodies presentable for public viewing. Jackson, owner of Richardson Mortuary, receives at least 10 young, black homicide victims a month; that's more than there were, say, 20 years ago, other longtime employees there remark.
''Inner-city [boys] are being killed over silly stuff . . . built on hate and envy,'' he said, shaking his head.
Forty years after the Kerner Commission report -- in the wake of the Watts riots in Los Angeles -- tried to sort out why young black men were killing each other, Jackson keeps wondering how things could have gotten so bad in South Florida and the nation.
A new, first-time Florida initiative seeks to find the answers and save at-risk black males -- who state Sen. Frederica Wilson, D-Miami, calls ``an endangered species.''
''This goes beyond public safety and prevention. It's public health. It goes to our mental condition,'' said state Rep. Frank Peterman, a St. Petersburg Democrat.
Peterman and Wilson sponsored legislation to create the Council on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys, which former Gov. Jeb Bush signed into law last June and which first met in February. The council, located in the Attorney General's office and budgeted at $200,000 per year, will study a litany of condi- tions that negatively affect black males: escalating homicide, arrest and incarceration rates, poverty, violence, low income, the breakdown of the family structure and school performance and health issues.
And it will produce yet another report -- like so many other commissions have done around the nation over the past 40 years -- that will propose ways to change the driving forces that have left so many black males in prison or dead from Miami and Fort Lauderdale to Orlando and Jacksonville.
Wilson said the council will recommend legislative action to address the issues of concern. The first report is due by the year's end.
Peterman promises the Florida commission won't be a ''touchy-feely exercise'' and said it will examine the breakdown in the black family and the heavy toll it is taking on males. To do that, it will need solid information of the sort requested by council chairman Levi Williams last week. In a teleconference on Wednesday, Williams, a Fort Lauderdale attorney, asked the heads of state agencies for data on racial and ethnic disparities.
SCOPE OF THE PROBLEM
Black males, Wilson said, are like Florida's panthers and manatees: dying young and at the mercy of human predators.
''We're so disproportionately affected by all of this [black-on-black male violence]. There are no men available to teach black boys how to become responsible men,'' Wilson said.
That sentiment is echoed by Beverly Colson Neal, executive director of the Florida NAACP office in Orlando: ``Our young men are dying. This didn't just start.''
Florida is among a handful of states, including Ohio and Indiana, to have panels looking for ways to stop the rising violence that is a festering national problem, one the U.S. Conference of Mayors also hopes to tackle. The mayors' meeting was held last month in Miami -- an appropriate venue to discuss violence because South Florida is a region under siege.
Consider:
• Figures provided by local law enforcement agencies lay out the scope of the carnage. Broward had 95 homicide victims in 2006, up 50 percent from the previous year. Miami-Dade had 258 homicides last year, up 40 percent from 2005. About 165 of those victims in Miami-Dade and Broward were black, the overwhelming majority male and younger than 35.
• Another telling figure, Wilson said, that spurred creation of Florida's council: Black males make up 51.2 percent of inmates in state prisons and 62 percent of the jail population. She cited figures from the Florida Department of Corrections.
• Nationally, it is difficult to determine overall numbers of black-on-black crime because police agencies do not keep such statistics. But in 2004 -- the latest year for which figures are available -- victimization rates for blacks were six times higher than rates for whites. Rates for black perpetrators were seven times higher.
THE CAUSES
There are a myriad of reasons, authorities say, for the uptick in local violence: poverty, a population spike for young men, police departments stretched thin on the streets, a proliferation of weapons. Police officials also lay blame on two key federal policy changes: the end of a ban on assault weapons, which put more high-powered guns on the streets; and the loss of funding for community policing and other programs that put more officers into neighborhoods.
Neal and fellow NAACP member Jamal Rose also blame much of the violence on the breakdown of black communities. Gone are many of the athletic and after-school activities that gave children something to do, Rose said. Gone too are many of the mom-and-pop stores, often replaced by chain convenience stores.
''The funds are being drawn out of the neighborhood but not being put back in,'' Rose said.
Too many successful blacks have left their old stomping grounds in favor of integrated suburban areas, Neal noted, leaving the poorest children often living among jobless felons recently released from prison.
Recognizing that, several successful blacks try to serve as role models for children. ''We know the challenges. Those stats are disturbing,'' said Willie Johnson, leader of a mentoring program at Koinonia Worship Center in Hallandale Beach's Carver Ranches community.
Johnson said the church and other segments of the black community must step up and fix the problem: ``The village ain't doing too good right now.''
For Jackson, the mortuary owner, the search for answers starts a lot closer than the mythical village: ``It's deep-rooted, and it starts in the home.''
Jackson sponsors and coaches Optimist football and basketball teams. He figures if boys are busy with school or sports, they have less time to get involved in seamier pursuits. Other civic leaders have hosted town hall meetings and teamed with local police departments in gun-buyback programs.
But individual efforts like these won't be enough to change things, social scientists say. What's needed, they say, is help from the system -- and that's something the new state council could eventually help.
For example, Harry Holzner, Georgetown University professor of public policy, says a sustained, comprehensive effort that begins with educating and mentoring boys as young as 3 years old is required so they don't fall off the radar screen when they reach adolescence.
''When they leave high school, you can plug them into services,'' he said.
FIRST-HAND VIEW
For young black men who have no formal job skills and no high school diploma, chances are slim of landing a job with a livable wage and benefits. Many of them don't expect traditional employment, said Miami native Gene Gesch, 27. Growing up in the inner city exposes them to deadly shootings. By the teen years, he says, they're desensitized to death and destruction.
Gesch should know. Instead of getting a low-wage job at a fast-food joint when he was a teenager, he opted for fast bucks. He started as a lookout for drug dealers, the way his Overtown and Liberty City friends did.
''That's the mentality of the youth,'' said Gesch. ``They want a Benz, a 745 -- the only way these young children think they're gonna get it is sell to work for someone else, selling dope on the corner or as a look out.''
Gesch came of age during the 1990s, when the infamous John Doe drug gang ruled the area. Gang members were his friends. He found a role model in a guy named ''Convertible Bert,'' a local drug dealer who drove around Liberty City wearing flashy garments. Gesch wanted the same things. He saw himself as a popular poet/rap artist who also had a fatalistic bent.
``I didn't care. I was Tupac . . . it was you and me against the world.''
That attitude landed Gesch in Florida's adult prison system at 16. He served five years for aggravated assault with a firearm. He was in solitary confinement a lot, he says, because he often got into fights with other inmates.
Salvation of sorts came when he transferred to the Dade Correctional Institution. A pair of older inmates believed he was better than his past behavior indicated, and they directed him to the prison library. There he was eventually inspired to turn his life around. He even became a mentor: He lectured middle- and high-school students in Wilson's 5000 Role Models of Excellence Project, counseling them not to follow his path.
After prison, Gesch moved hours away from Miami, to St. Lucie County.
He said kids have to know they can make money legitimately instead of selling dope -- if they change their environment. In his former community, he said, ``they have no hope in their mind.
``They see people get robbed, get killed. A lot of people have been to prison in that community. It's real hard. It's an ongoing struggle.''
Success stories such as Gesch's are the ones that council member Christopher Norwood of Miami Lakes wants to highlight as the group does its work.
''Too often we concentrate on the failures of black youth and do our research based on the failures. We don't spend a lot of time focusing on the successes,'' Norwood said. ``There's not enough research on the resiliency in black men. That's what I want our research to focus on.''
'Our young men are dying' Pt 1
2-day summit tackles gang violence
A think tank convened in Liberty City on Monday, preparing for a two-day summit to battle gang violence and deal with the release of felons.
BY CHARLES RABIN
crabin@MiamiHerald.com
The set-up: two round tables on a small stage at the Carrie P. Meek Cultural Center in Liberty City. At one table, four concerned parents. At the other, drug dealers and gang members.
But who was who? As an audience of law enforcement agents and residents met Monday to discuss reshaping how South Florida handles gang violence and the hardships of felons returning to society, that was among the questions they faced.
'Good afternoon. None of y'all know me -- but your kids know me. I been takin' care of your kids, scoopin' your daughters up, cuz guess what I need 'em to do?'' said one man, who identified himself only as ``Mr. M.''
The audience applauded. And ''Mr. B,'' at the other table, was infuriated.
''I'd appreciate it if y'all don't applaud these people. Y'all are sick,'' he said. Nobody clapped.
But the men had reversed their roles, for effect. Mr. B was former Philadelphia gang member Fabian Walker. Mr. M, Green Bay Packers strong safety Marquand Manuel.
The lesson: Perception often isn't reality. But for people like Francisco Guerra a former Latin Kings gang leader in Chicago, the reality is that once you become a convicted felon, jobs and acceptance are tough to come by.
Monday's gathering was a peek into a two-day summit that begins today in Miami that will be attended by more than 200 criminal-justice professionals from around the country. The goal is to create new strategies for helping felons reacquaint with society and for dealing with gangs.
FLORIDA FELONS
A recent study by the Governor's Ex-Offender Task Force concluded that Florida has the third-largest prison population in the United States, with more than 30,000 felons trying to reenter the workforce each year.
The task force determined that under current conditions, most ex-offenders will not abide by the law after they return home.
Guerra argued Monday that South Florida doesn't have a real gang problem. What it has, he said, is a debilitating drug problem that law enforcement fails to keep up with.
Guerra, 40, said raising two kids the past 16 years has been a struggle, with him often working odd construction jobs at low wages. For some, the struggle is too much.
''Everybody wants to get out. They just don't know how. There are a million reasons I can give you,'' he said. ``We need help, starting in our homes. Grab 'em and school 'em. Don't grab 'em and treat 'em like gang bangers.''
Artis Brown spoke of spending a decade in prison on drug charges. Two years ago, he got a criminal justice degree. He's still looking for work, he said.
''Give him a job in gang violence,'' Brown said pointing to Guerra. ``Give me a job as a motivational speaker.''
Then it was back to the Packers' Manuel, a local high school graduate and University of Florida alum who runs a mentoring program each year at Booker T. Washington High School.
One of 18 children, he told of how tough it was growing up in the inner city.
COCAINE AT 9
''I was holding cocaine at 9 years old. I didn't know what it was. My kids have to grow up here. I want to intervene before it gets to that point,'' he said.
Earlier Monday the same group met with inmates inside West Miami-Dade's Turner Guilford Knight correctional facility. Wayne E. Rawlins, who coordinates Project Safe Neighborhoods, a group that fights gun violence, said they spoke mainly with juveniles charged with adult crimes.
''There is no parent. There is no home. And foster care is not an option for them,'' he said.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Dead Teenagers
I don't have much to say today but this link says it all
http://www.realcities.com/multimedia/miami/news/archive/deadteens/index.html
http://www.realcities.com/multimedia/miami/news/archive/deadteens/index.html
Monday, February 19, 2007
Justice for 14 year old dumped in garbage
Thank you dear Lord. You brought justice for Rod Williams. He may not have been an angel but he was 14 and I feel, a lost little lamb. His mom died of AIDS, he was shifting between aunt, dad and older sister, as if no one wanted him. His mom died when he was 7. Not saying he had a good life before she died but mothers are the ones who we bond with the most and dads are there for us to grow to be a better man and for male guidance but his mom dying probably had a lot to do with how he was before his death.
Anyway. Four of Rod's friends were arrested in connection with his murder. Apparently, they shot him and buried the body so they wouldn't get in trouble. The ages of the shooters were 13-16. One of the mothers saw the blood and they lied and said they were chased and beaten up. She believed it. The killers stories are different but either way, they won't have a life to live. That's the worst part of it.
Why is the mother of one of the teen boys accused of killing Rod Williams defending him? She said he was scared. Fine. But don't sit there and say he had nothing to do with it. If she knew the law, then she would know that because he helped clean up the blood, he's an accessory.
Anyway. Four of Rod's friends were arrested in connection with his murder. Apparently, they shot him and buried the body so they wouldn't get in trouble. The ages of the shooters were 13-16. One of the mothers saw the blood and they lied and said they were chased and beaten up. She believed it. The killers stories are different but either way, they won't have a life to live. That's the worst part of it.
Why is the mother of one of the teen boys accused of killing Rod Williams defending him? She said he was scared. Fine. But don't sit there and say he had nothing to do with it. If she knew the law, then she would know that because he helped clean up the blood, he's an accessory.
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