Crime and Punishment Gangs Life and Life Only

The Murderous Seasons of Newark, Oakland…and Los Angeles

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All four were bright and shining kids, all attending (or about to attend) the same college,
all friends and/or siblings, all filled with promise. The fact that three are dead is horror enough—with one barely surviving, heavily sedated against the emotional shattering.

But shot kneeling….execution style?
Why was it so personal? Why so vicious? And why did it happen to these kids whose lives would seem to have repelled—not courted—this kind of violence?

If for some reason you’re not yet aware of the incident in which four Newark students were shot on Saturday night, here’s a short summary of the tragedy from the New York Times:

NEWARK, Aug. 6 — They had spent most of their young lives in perfect rhythm, a brother, a sister and their best friend: attending proms together, playing in the West Side High School marching band here, choosing the same college. A fourth young man, a more recent addition to their close-knit circle, had charisma enough to attract his own following.In the end, facing a chilling execution, they turned to each other with text messages, the authorities said Monday, saying it was time to leave.

But it was too late. About 11:30 Saturday night, in the playground of the Mount Vernon School in this city’s Ivy Hill neighborhood, Iofemi Hightower, 20; Natasha Aeriel, 19; her brother, Terrance Aeriel, 18; and Dashon Harvey, 20, resisted what the police believe were several attackers who shot Ms. Aeriel and forced the other three friends to kneel against a wall behind the school and shot them at close range.

Only Ms. Aeriel survived
, despite a gunshot wound to the head. Listed in fair condition Monday at University Hospital, she has been cooperating with the police, although she has been able to give only limited statements because she is heavily sedated, said Garry F. McCarthy, the police director.

“She understands what happened,”
he said at an afternoon news conference.


And then last Thursday, on the other side of the nation
, Chauncey Bailey, a well-liked veteran reporter who had recently been named editor of the Oakland Post, was walking to work in the morning when a masked gunman ambushed him, raised a shotgun and blew him away.

In Bailey’s case we know why it likely happened. Bailey was writing an expose about a once-respected, now scandal-ridden neighborhood institution called Your Black Muslim Bakery. A 19-year-old bakery worker named Devaughndre Broussard shot him as a result—possibly with the help of others from the bakery. (It’s also rumored that bakery people might be involved in two earlier murders in July.)

But while that may be a motive…it’s not a reason, at least not an understandable one.

Look, I don’t know that I can suggest any greater meaning here, or find some deeper pattern that portends some quick fix “crack down on crime” solution. Hell, in the last two days (Sunday and Monday) there were six homicides in LA—none of them seeming to draw any special press attention.
“August has been the highest homicide month in Los Angeles for many years,” writes LA Times reporter Jill Leovy on her Homicide Report. Blog, “Recent entries on The Homicide Report reflect this traditional summer increase in violence.”

The truth is that addressing crime in our inner cities—particularly among the young—is a complex and labor intensive affair requiring all hands on deck.

So maybe the best step right now is just to acknowledge what has happened—and admit that, whatever state, or city or part of town we live in, these murderous seasons affect us all.

33 Comments

  • Celeste, this is more than a problem “particularly among the young.” It’s a problem particular among the blacks. If that aspect gets ignored by people seeking solutions, then there will be few solutions. Don’t worry about political correctness when lives are at stake.

  • Previous Crimes
    The 19-year-old bakery worker named Devaughndre Broussard who killed Bailey was on Parole for robbing and assaulting a Christopher Hall trying to get on the train.

    “He should have gone to state prison,” said Hall’s father, San Francisco attorney Christopher Hall, who expressed outrage after being told by The Chronicle that his son’s attacker was now accused of killing Bailey. Hall blamed the office of San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris for allowing Broussard to be put on probation in February 2006.

    “You guys didn’t see the video. I wanted to cry when I saw my son get viciously attacked. There was blood all over the place. It looked like a cattle bus. He was attacked for no damn reason.”

    Can we even guess how many crimes came before the killings of the kids in New York.

  • Woody, in the case of the first two crimes, sure. But the LA murders in the last two days, it’s blacks and Latinos. But I agree. The politically correct thing has to go.

    I saw that, Pokey. Look, our problem as a nation isn’t that we don’t lock up enough people for long enough. We over incarcerate as it is.

    With Broussard, who obviously we wish had been locked up, I don’t know why he wasn’t given prison time. In most cases, with a robbery/assault he’d have gone straight to the state pen. As a state, we don’t exactly have a track record for leniency on such things.

    It’s exactly this kind of situation with an awful murder by someone who’s obviously unhinged, that has gotten us laws on the books that we now regret. If you try to incarcerate for “potentiality,” it leads you down the road to creepy sci fi movies like Minority Report where people are locked up for thinking about a crime.

    Don’t go there.

  • Gee Woody I thought it was a bunch of goombhas getting whacked in Jersey! Isn’t that what TV says?

  • “a once-respected, now scandal-ridden neighborhood institution called Your Black Muslim Bakery”

    For the record, and it’s not pretty, this “Bakery” hasn’t been “respected” for quite a while by any sentient Oakland residents. “Black Muslim” leader Yusef Bey, who founded the thing, was exposed about six years ago and charged as a serial child molester – raping teenage girls in his and his wife’s custody – with incidents going back twenty years. He died of cancer before he could be tried. He had a bunch of sons who’ve been involved in criminal activity since at least the early ’90s. At least one of them was shot down in the street by another drug dealer. Two of them were charged in an incident involving the torture of a Nigerian guy in a – get this – REAL ESTATE DEAL that went bad. One of these guys got a $1 million loan from the city to start a business, after pleading no contest to these charges, and never started the business or paid back the lone. This was at the time these two scumbags also served on former Mayor Elihu Harris’ African-American advisory commission on crime. After Daddy’s (none-too-soon) death, and “Your” bakery faced bankruptcy, another son stepped in and tried to save it. I am sorry to note that both Ron Dellums and Barbara Lee supported him his efforts to “save” this discredited and disreputable enterprise. Even after the murder of Chauncey Baily – who was a tireless, grassroots journalist who was highly respected by the entire community for his dedication – Lee spokesman Nathan Britton said Friday, “Congresswoman Barbara Lee is on record supporting the bakery as a community institution.” I’m too disgusted by the whole mess to dig up any more details, but I’m fairly certain Jerry Brown’s administration didn’t completely cut this group off from any access or participation in city programs either. They ran “security” services that had contracts with the city over a pretty long period.

    And, for what its worth, this “Black Muslim” group no longer had any ties to the Nation of Islam. I’m not sure how many years its been – probably dating back to when Yusef got charged with rape and molestation – but the official Black Muslims dropped the guy like a hot potato and wouldn’t have anything to do with him LONG BEFORE local politicians – white and black – decided enough was enough. In fact, they barely came clean even after Bailey was murdered. Totally disgusting.

    I have to say that although Rib Dellums did a lot of good in Congress back in the day, I’m glad I didn’t vote for him this time around. I had a nasty feeling it would be a re-run of the corrupt and stagnant Elihu Harris years with a better figurehead at the helm.

    And I’ll never vote for Barbara Lee again, having read that statement by her office. She’s a big icon of the anti-war folks – but I’m sick of her. More concerned about PC rhetoric than any real change that might benefit the community. There’s a white “liberal” pol here, Don Perata, who’s just as much of a crony and phony. These people disgust me. I’d rather be screwed by rightwingers than by people who talk a bunch of liberal platitudes but act like typical corrupt machine politicians – or worse.

    I’m sure I’ve made Woody’s day. But this murder and the years of watching the Bey family run amok makes me sick at heart. Daddy Bey used to have a show on local cable which was one of the most racist pieces of shit I’ve ever heard in my life. And not because of what he said about white folks – a subject I could care less about. Every “sermon” was a tirade against his own community and how immoral and culturally deficient black people were because they weren’t following his crackpot teachings. This spew from a goddam rapist-child molester who was himself nothing but a parasite and a one-family crime wave.

    Thanks for letting me share…

  • “Rib” would be “Ron”

    chalk any weird stuff in the above comment to “typing when pissed”

  • “It’s a problem particular among the blacks. If that aspect gets ignored by people seeking solutions, then there will be few solutions.”

    Woody – I’d be interested in your addressing more precisely what “solutions” suggest themselves to you given your insight that this is a problem “particular among the blacks”. I have some very strong feelings and concrete ideas about what should be done to address the prevalence of certain kinds of violent crime in black communities, especially given the “particular” history of those communities. I’d be more than happy to share, but I’m just curious what your notion of “solutions” are that would arise from bringing the factor of race into a discussion of crime. (This is an especially curious suggestion, given that conservatives are rather famously “colorblind” in addressing policy issues, according to their own protestations ?”)

  • And just want to clarify that the “typing when pissed” comment relates to the tragedy, not to “rd”s blog entry, which was a good one.

  • reg, you didn’t make my day and I’m never happy at reading about how people have been committing crimes and getting away with them–not even Clinton’s.

    Regarding “solutions,” the first step is to quit all this political correctness and quit blaming “the white folks” for black crimes, for which black-on-black is the greatest. Rather than telling people that it’s not their fault and that government should do more to help them, such as by reverse discrimination, it would be better to teach personal responsibility and prices of bad decisions. Why, we even have people here in Atlanta trying to make Michael Vick’s dog fights into a civil rights issue.

    Solutions are very involved, but the first step is to correctly define and communicate the problem–not the one that people would like to hear.

  • The black people I know – and they are quite a few, including extensive immediate family – are way ahead of you on this one Woody.

    But you haven’t told me what solutions you suggest that are based on race, which you suggested was an essential component of solving these issues.

    I happen to be for quite a number of community-based “solutions”, including much more effective policing (that would involved increased numbers of cops as well as more cops out of their cars and on the streets), as well as major job, education and training programs (quite different from Nixonian welfare, incidentally) targeted at those same blighted, crime-ridden, econmically depressed communities. Because I’m a firm believer in what you would call – absurdly and ignorantly – “reverse-discrimination”, I wouldn’t put those same targeted programs in place in your gated community. Nor, because I’m a firm believer in “class discrimination” as well as “racial discrimination” would I target them toward those black middle class folks who have, understandably, gotten the hell out of those pockets of marginalization and misery.

  • I have to say that, as a matter of history, it is perfectly appropriate to “blame white folks” for many of the problems that continue to haunt black people. As a matter of expecting white folks to solve the problems particular to black neighborhoods, I agree any such notion is foolish and irresponsible. But it’s a cheay and cynical copout to claim that social programs (i.e. government) aren’t part of any necessary solution to areas in which crime, unemployment, terrible schools, and a general abandonment of the weakest and youngest to various “wolves” has become endemic. In other words, yes I’d raise taxes on your ass to accomplish some essential aspects of these “solutions”. Otherwise your sermon about “responsibility” and “bad decisions” rings hollow. You want to escape the weight of history and act like every day is a new day and we can simply put a curtain between ourselves and our collective past. That’s morally wrong and totally wrongheaded.

  • Great posts, reg. The one on the history of the Bakery and of Yusef Bey…..and all the various personalities and forces swirling around them… Fascinating. I read a tiny bit history last night when I was posting, but frankly not even vaguely enough to feel I had any sort of grip on it, so I simply punted, in that regard.

    (BTW, in one of those article’s I linked, I believe it was Bey’s son-in-law who was Bailey’s source on the expose, and the son-in-law said that, although he was a little worried about his own safety, it never occurred to him that they’d attack Bailey.)

    And, yeah, the community-based solutions reg mentions are precisely the all-hands on deck approach we need—in Oakland, in LA, in Newark…and elsewhere. It ain’t, however, easy to get. Thus far there’s nothing close to resembling the needed political will.

  • “Thus far there’s nothing close to resembling the needed political will.”

    Also known in vernacular parlance as “Nobody really gives a shit.”

  • reg, the black community is NOT way ahead of me. Look at how they attacked Bill Cosby when he specifically identified aspects of black culture as being a major problem.

    Black kids don’t use proper English and limit their job opportunities. And, it’s hard to want to hire someone who dresses ghetto with his pants half way down. Black students don’t like people who make good grades and “act white.” Stealing is excused because someone owes it to them–especially with black politicians. O.J. and Michael Vick become victims of racism. Young girls get pregnant with little concern about getting married to the fathers, and the fathers take pride in their breeding success. Of course, all of that leads to poverty, but I guess that it’s easier for the SCLC and its like to blame white folks rather than their own.

    Funny, I haven’t seen black communities teaching standard English to kids, teaching them values to avoid pregnancy out of wedlock, and holding up successful blacks as role models except those who sing or in the NBA. Some of those problems may exist, but they aren’t popular and don’t reflect the attitudes of black leadership.

    Who is letting down the black community? Black leadership. Victimhood has become a cottage industry for them, and they can’t let those government grants go away by actually solving problems.

    But, people like you won’t admit it, which leads to no solutions and further poverty.

  • You have absolutely no conception of the distinctions and differences that exist in “the black community”, given the way you talk about this. Cosby was expressing what is “conventional wisdom” in much of “the black community”. Essentially, what you are expressing is a profound ignorance. Cosby made his comments at an NAACP gathering and was defended by Jesse Jackson. His most vocal critic was a guy who’s a university professor. There are major and very problematic generational and class divides among black people. But, so far as I can tell, black people didn’t invent generational and class divides over matters of behavior, culture, education, etc. In fact, segregation kept a bit of a lid on these divisions within the black community because there was such a stark divide being imposed on the whole.

    Bottom line, your comments are ignorant, ill-informed and bigoted. If you wonder why – all other issues and controversies among themselves aside – in the political realm black people overwhelmingly don’t see GOPers as even marginally people who give a shit about them, rise above rank bigotry or comprehend the range of problems faced by the black community in general, give yourself a good long look in the mirror. All you offer are racist cliches, platitudes and you display profound a ignorance. You are typical of white southerners who THINK they have some comprehension of “the black community” because of a degree of proximity. Truth is, you’re version 2 of the same old racist shit.

  • Incidentally, for anyone who’s interested in assessing facts as opposed to know-nothing talking points, the overall rate of pregnancy among teenagers, which peaked in the 1950s (who knew?) is at its lowest ever – about half what it was fifty years ago. Of course, there has been an equally dramatic decline in the rate of marriage among teenagers, which means that the rate of unmarried teen pregnancies increased. And, as Stephanie Coontz shows in her good book on the history of marriage and families in America, “The Way We Never Were”, the apparent increase in the rate of out-of-wedlock births to poor, black mothers – which like the teen pregnancy rate in general have actually seen a dramatic decline in recent years – has more to do with a dramatically declining birth rate for married black women – something that happens when incomes and opportunities begin to rise among the middle classes of all races – than some stark change in the behavior of the poor that we can lay at LBJ’s door. And, of course, the increase in rate of pregnancy among unmarried women has been of late growing much faster among white women than black women.

    I’m not denying that teen pregnancy and strengthening families aren’t major challenges in the contemporary landscape. But I AM suggesting that most people who rant about this, recycle cliches and make racist assumptions don’t know what the hell they’re talking about and should stick to things they can actually understand and which fit into their knowledge base and attention spans, like how many home runs Barry Bonds hit.

  • I’m not a statistician, so my use of the word “rate” may not be precise throughout that comment. I think the information and trends I’m referencing are fairly clear. Certainly more coherent, reality-based and informed by actual data than the recycled soundbites they challenge.

  • I just want to clarify something: the rates of birth among single black women – which tended to fall in recent decades – versus the rates of of births among married black women – which have fallen faster by a facter of four in the last statistic I’ have access to (1970-1992, admittedly out of date but certainly covering the decades wherein the most controversy over this issue was generated) doesn’t address marriage rates, which I would assume have declined in general as indicated by the teen pregnancy vs. teen out-of-wedlock births stats I also alluded to. As I said, I’m not denying that problems exist that need to be addressed, but I NEVER hear any of this data put in any context other than alarmist, accusatory and quite often blatantly racist in its assumptions when it gets discussed by “usual suspects” of the ideological right wielding their half-baked talking points. Chalk it up to “lack of education.”

    Incidentally, in that Cosby article linked above the phrase “Cosby was attacked…” is used probably a dozen times. Not once in the almost numbingly stereotypical offering from GOP has-been Kenneth Blackwell is a quote or a name referenced to substantiate that “black leaders” attacked Cosby, save one – a writer in “The Village Voice”, that well-known “voice” of black leadership. And the article itself has Cosby making one of his “controversial” remarks about the importance of education while he was touring a black school in the company of Gov. Doug Wilder. This is typical of the half-baked crap offered up by the wingnut contingency. My more terse and wholly appropriate commentary on the value of rightwing input on these issues is registered above at 8:45am.

  • Illuminating, reg. Thanks for taking the time. Your depth on the issues and the people is evident. You’ve made it easy to distinguish between knowledge and verbal-vomit.

  • Bull, reg. You’re running from the truth and real solutions as fast as you can with rationalizations and selective, outdated statistics.

    Regarding Bill Cosby, perhaps you can enlighten us with all of the civil rights groups that have endorsed Cosby and made him a spokeman for helping black youths. Would you link their pages to us? I seem to remember a concerted effort to destroy the man with investigations and groping charges by leadership and the media for black status quo. If you missed this, then let me introduce you to google.

    If you want to know which heroes are held up to blacks and other youths during Black History Month, one educational site had sixteen categories of prominent blacks of which ten were for entertainers and athletes. Don’t tell me that black kids don’t admire Michael Jordan more than they do George Washinton Carver.

    Just for starters, let me know what you think about black English aka ebonics. Should schools be teaching this or helping students learn standard English to increase job opportunities? LINK: Oakland schools adopt ‘Black English’ policy Or, would you rather them not talk like a white people?

    Just think how many kids are written off because political correctness is more important than their futures.

    And, you can call me racist all that you want, because that’s all you’ve got left to throw–but, you’re dead wrong.

  • Woody, I’m far more familiar with the idiotic “ebonics” flap than you are. That old chestnut that caused a public furor and was dumped is a stretch, even for you. Second, you charged that “black leaders” – and by implication most black leaders and most of the black community – attacked Cosby and disagree with the thrust of his remarks. You have produced no proof of that. Even Sharpton agreed that Cosby had made important points and opened up an important discussion within the larger black community. If you can’t marshall Al Sharpton to prove what opportunistic demagogues “black leaders” are on a particular issue, you’re essentially talking out of your ass. Most of the digs at Cosby came from youngsters who saw it as an attack on hip hop by an “old guy”. So what is there for me to refute ?

    You’re an idiot. And a racist in the tenor of your jumble of familiar cliches. “Grains of truth” aren’t good enough in discussions like this, if you expect people outside of the “Human Events” crowd to take your positions seriously.

    I’m through with you on this because it’s just getting me more pissed off the more I read your nonsensical crap and bogus “challenges”.

  • Incidentally, the paternity suit against Cosby, which may or may not have been justified – I don’t find it productive to spend my time on such matters – was lodged in 1997. Cosby’s sharp and well-publicized remarks on evident problems among black youth and within too many black families, are circa 2005. So your chronology on the “concerted effort to destroy” him with “groping charges” doesn’t ring true.

    Also, don’t tell me the current white kids don’t know more about and admire scumbag like 50 Cent more than they know or admire Frederick Douglas…or Dwight Eisenhower for that matter. Black people don’t control the consumer and “pop” culture or the media (MTV, ESPN, etc) that drives it. When black capitalists DO get control of commercial media, i.e. BET, of course they tend to operate on the same profit-driven principles of selling sensationalism and the least-common denominator as their white “brothers and sisters.” What else is new ????

  • I’ll embarrass myself a bit – after “finis” – and note, again just for the record, that the entire “ebonics” scam was about allocation of funds among different ethnic groups within the Oakland school district – an opportunistic, ill-considered and FAILED attempt by black school board members to get their hands on bilingual education funds allocated for immigrant kids (there are over a dozen primary languages in some East Oakland schools serving mostly poor kids) in order to institute additional English instruction for black kids, aimed at addressing their “non-standard” English and lack of marketable language skills. As half-assed as the proposal clearly was, the intent was, in fact, the opposite of what’s most often portrayed.

  • reg, it’s amazing the research that you normally produce but that you can’t find higher level attacks against Bill Cosby than the hip-hop crowd. It is your chronology that is wrong, because new revelations and claims of harrassment conveniently came up when Cosby started talking. It was like listening to the Clarence Thomas hearings. That’ll teach Cosby and anyone else who tries to help millions of kids at the expense of being able to blame others and getting huge grants to solve nothing.

    If you have trouble understanding this, consider using the Ebonics Translator. But, remember…potential employers will not hire people if they have to use this.

  • On Sharpton, sometimes he gets things right and sometimes he avoids what is uncomfortable. (BTW, he’s spoken at a church down the road from me two or three times.) Here’s a cause that he has recently adopted:

    LINK: SHARPTON BATTLES RAP LYRICS

    Al Sharpton has found his latest cause … demanding that rappers stop using the n-word and degrading women. In fact, he is willing to go so far as to withdrawal government-run pension fund investments from entertainment conglomerates that distribute music with offensive lyrics. We’re talking $3 billion worth of investments, to be exact. And that’s just in New York State alone.

    Sharpton says, “The opposition has tried to use the argument of free speech, but they don’t have the freedom to use peoples’ pension funds against their own will and interest.”

    OK .. so Sharpton is actually doing something positive here. Why stop at rap lyrics? Why not try to do something about the black, urban, anti-achievement culture that is crippling so many of our black youth? Come on, Al. Attacking the rap business, while a positive step, is rather easy. Why not do something about the very culture that feeds these businesses? Afraid to bite the hand that feeds you?

  • One last thing, we need to remember the subject of this post. Kids being murdered is horrible, and ideological differences should not stand in the way of trying to end crime and to catch the murderers.

  • Yeah, listen to Al Sharpton, he’ll teach a little brother how to snort that cocaine.
    Sharpton is another jack ass that just uses the media to gain national fame with no clue of what is really occurring in minority communities and poverty stricten cities. I put him neck to neck with Connnie Rice’s bullcrapping opinions and their so called recommendations. We dont need these people getting paid to steal research material and talk out of their assess on issues that we all already know are not working. They talk their asses off recommending everything from letter A to Z and are completely clueless and out of touch to the people they are so called-trying to help. When I see people like Father-G, I respectfully shake his hand because he may not be able to solve all the ill issues of gang issues, but at least he knows when to cut the bullshit.

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