Unclear Who Are the Bad Guys

[shatto]

Yep. It's the fault of the police.....not the neighbors.





http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_1...nclick_check=1



Too bad, doing the right thing brings this family response. Really sad.

[theholycow]

The link is broken.

[theclencher]

It's quite clear who the bad guys are. Gangs and the culture that tolerates them. And mommas that don't raise their boys to know right from wrong.

[theholycow]

If we're going to talk about childhood, I can definitely agree with those things. I'd like to also talk about how kids can't just be kids anymore; they can't get into a little mischief and recover. Paranoia, FUD, and zero tolerance policies mean that once a kid does one moderately stupid thing, all of the sudden he's lumped in with the gang members and really awful kids.

I got away with plenty of harmless stuff that would get a kid sent to Guantanemo Bay now...and I'm not that old.

[FrugalFloyd]

It's hard to fault the police. It's impossible to imagine living in that Richmond war zone and coming out unscathed.
-----------------------------------
Maxima Perez saw her grandson running and heard the shots. She watched the van speed down 23rd Street. She yelled to him, then saw him fold over.

Francisco Javier Perez, 20, died on her front lawn. Not to anyone's surprise, at least nobody in the family.

About that, Maxima says this: "It was their fault. The police are the ones."

Perez, under San Pablo police pressure to do the right thing, testified at a murder trial in 2006, helping convict Sureno gang member Victor Cerda of killing a 17-year-old rival at Davis Park.

In return, his family says, he earned three years of fear in his own neighborhood followed by his terrifying end Aug. 5. They still await an apology from the San Pablo Police Department, which hours after the shooting arrested three suspects — including Cerda's younger brother — all Sureno gang members.

"When I heard the gunshots that morning, I knew it was him," said Irma Aguilar, Perez's aunt. "He knew they were coming for him."

San Pablo police responded to the attack with alacrity, identifying and arresting the suspects within eight hours of the shooting and collecting enough evidence to prosecute soon thereafter. Prosecutors this week filed murder charges against Alberto Alejandre and Hung Nguyen, both 24, and 19-year-old Martin Cerda.

But detectives confess that they feel deeply frustrated, both by the family's reaction and by decisions Perez made that they believe increased his risk.

Since the June 2006 trial, San Pablo officers spoke to Perez more than once about moving. Not far, necessarily — just out of the immediate neighborhood, where a young man can't help but see and be seen by someone associated with Varrio Frontero Locos, a Surenos subset indigenous to North Richmond and parts of San Pablo.

But Perez didn't take the advice, police say.

"He would say, 'No, I'm OK, I'm OK,'" said Detective Sgt. Jeff Palmieri.

Palmieri distinctly remembers a conversation with Perez after someone shot up the front of his family's home in 2007 and spray-painted an enormous "VFL" across the front.

The gang ranks among San Pablo's top law enforcement concerns. The department spent many, many hours in recent years building homicide cases against its most aggressive members and, last year, in a large grand jury indictment against a dozen of its leaders for crimes ranging from drug dealing to murder.

Another brother of a suspect in Perez's killing, Ramon Alejandre, went to prison for murder last year for the 2007 shooting death of a 15-year-old on 11th Street. Police said he and two other Surenos spent the afternoon cruising around San Pablo, looking for Nortenos to kill, when they settled on Ivan Santos because he wore red pants.

The method in that case demonstrated neither fastidiousness nor much initiative on the part of the attackers, traits shared in Perez's killing. Detectives say the VFL did not script last week's attack; rather, three guys driving to the store on 23rd Street happened to see someone they disliked and impulsively killed him.

Perez walked along 23rd Street every morning to his job.

"He lived with fear. He wouldn't walk alone anymore," said Nancy Ortiz, the victim's cousin. "He told us, after the court date, 'I've just signed my death warrant.'"‰"

[theholycow]

You might think that fear of certain death would be enough to pull up your roots and move to a different ghetto, or maybe even (god forbid) somewhere that's not a ghetto. I know it's not easy, and that death is easy, but I'd still prefer very difficult over very dead.

[Jay2TheRescue]

I agree. If I thought my life was in that much danger I'd move.

[shatto]

I call it 'Ghetto Mentality' and if you've ever suffered depression you have had it.
You are incapable of imagining moving, of changing, of anything different.

[GasSavers_maximilian]

Reminds me of acquired helplessness.

[shatto]

Yes, and so when someone, especially a Conservative like Clarence Thomas comes along they believe he had to have stolen his success. So it never occurs to them to follow in his footsteps. The dirty little secret is that he, and the vast majority of successful people would help anybody to do what they did.