Law Enforcement is unable to purchase weapons because of the insatiable consumer appetite for weapons. Ammunition that once was easy to obtain is in scarce supply. Since the election of President Obama in 2008, 20 states including Texas has passed permit-less carry legislation. Whether you attribute the gun gluttony to fear of crime, political polarization, or love for the constitutional right to bear arms, there is a painful price to pay in our neighborhoods and on our streets.
A few weeks ago, in the parking lot of the Fiesta at Kirby and South Main streets, a murder took place on a mid-afternoon. A pedestrian was walking through the parking lot, and he touched a parked vehicle. The driver of the parked automobile exited his car and engaged in an argument with the pedestrian. He returns to his car and retrieves a gun and shoots the pedestrian.
This random and senseless murder is evidence that everyone in the village is not healthy and do not deserve to carry a firearm. There is a mountain of evidence that teenagers and very young adults do not have mature brains and are unable to exercise the requisite decision-making in stressful situations. Coping skills are required to navigate challenging social situations whether it is within a family or a neighborhood.
Another senseless murder took occurred a month ago following an Astros home game. Facts suggest that a young Black man indiscriminately fired a bullet from the driver’s seat of his automobile into the car of another Astros patron, tragically killing his 16-year-old son. After some stellar homicide detective work by HPD, the assailant has turned himself in. If the preliminary evidence holds, the accused has already served hard time at Penn State (penitentiary) for a prior aggravated offense. Road rage is being tapped to be the motive for this killing of an innocent child.
Don’t you just cringe when a misdirected violent crime takes place. Your subconscious mind whispers, “ I pray that he is not Black.” We do this out of righteous indignation and shame.
Brothers killing brothers, children killing children is known as fratricide. The marginalized Black community has internalized the psychology of inferiority that flowed from enslavement. Our aggression has always been misplaced aggression.
About 35 percent of City of Houston revenue is allotted to policing. When murderers are apprehended, the misguided but well-intentioned advocates of DEFUND the POLICE wither, as they should.
“The murder Accountability Project, a nonprofit watchdog that tracks unsolved murders, found in 2019 that “declining homicide clearance rates for African- American victims accounted for all of the nation’s alarming decline in law enforcement’s ability to clear murders through the arrest of criminal offenders.” In Chicago, the public radio station WBEZ’s analysis of 19 months of murder investigation records showed that “when the victim was white, 47% of the cases solved. For Hispanics, the rate was about 33%. When the victim was African American, it was less than 22%.”
Black popular culture exists in the larger American ethos. Rappers have joined in promoting a trope of “no snitching and snitches get stitches” to gullible young brothers and sisters. Yes, he who controls the image controls the action. Our communities often go silent and will not give clues to violent crimes such as murder and rape. All that you have to do is to stop satisfying your selfish self and call CRIMESTOPPERS. If we don’t shake the mantle of this ain’t my fight, the beast opens the front door and sits in our living rooms. This means that the American thug Taliban will bully innocent citizens. Let’s keep in mind that there is no statute of limitations on murder. Let me repeat. THERE IS NO STATUE OF LIMITATIONS ON MURDER!
Cry for the young brothers who stupidly believe that Makaveli -Tupac is alive and living as a recluse in the Caribbean. Cry for the young brothers who spout that Biggie is alive. Cry for the young brothers who disregard the crippling impacts of big caliber weapons and bullets that have no name.
Yes, police departments must reform. But we must reform and shift paradigms. Are we mature enough to recognize that if your mother is threatened to be MURDERED by a boyfriend or ex-husband that disregards a peace bond, you can’t call BLM? My point” DO NOT under-police and let’s not over-police. Let’s not over invest in policing and under invest in pre-kindergarten and communities with livable wage jobs.
The police often cause great harm, however, producing weak families and communities cause greater harm. Indeed, there are systemic, institutional causes for weak communities and families. Nevertheless, the government can’t make me father my children. Let me state what we instinctively know, absentee parents, especially fathers predispose a child to delinquency and incarceration. We, each one of us, are the most powerful weapon that we have in the effort to stop the violence, police instigated violence and inter-community.
If we don’t control the production and dissemination of ideas and win the fight for the hearts and minds of the people, this culling of the men of the race and community will continue.
Catch the wave, All Lives Matter, SOLVE EVERY MURDER regardless of race, class, ethnicity, or gender. -sexual persuasion. Every transgender murder needs to be solved.
IF there is a loving God in the universe and the senseless violence and death accelerate, GOD must be playing with us.
