To school, not just another homicide
All the news reporters at The Sun are required to participate in a weekend work rotation, and last Friday, it was my turn to work the night police shift. Around 10 p.m., I heard from a city police department spokesman that a black juvenile male had been shot in the head. It didn't sound good, but we didn't know for sure if he was alive or dead. As midnight approached and with it the deadline for the paper's final edition, I was able to get enough details from the spokesman (some of them wrong, it later turned out) to squeak out a couple of sentences: A 17-year-old Baltimore resident was killed shortly after 9:30 p.m. at 28th Street and Hillen Road. As I left work early Saturday morning, I wondered about this boy: where he'd gone to school, what his life was like. I wondered, as I often do while writing homicide briefs on weekend shifts, how we would have treated his death if he were white and lived in Howard County.
At Tuesday night's school board meeting, I learned a bit more about him, about David Henderson, who was 18 and shot in the chest (or so the police later said). He was a student at Doris M. Johnson High School, where -- coincidentally -- I spoke to a few freshman English classes earlier this spring about how to write a newspaper profile. The students were writing profiles of the presidential candidates. To give them practice gathering information, I let them interview me about myself and my job. Their teachers were embarrassed when they asked how much money I make, how old I am and whether I'm married, but I told them that reporters have to ask uncomfortable questions and I answered everything they asked. They were a fun group.
The seniors at Doris Johnson were dancing at their prom Friday night when they learned their classmate had been murdered. And if that wasn't enough, four kids leaving the prom were in a car accident when their vehicle was struck by a drunken driver. One was injured seriously.
Speaking at the board meeting, a social worker from the school said David was a "really wonderful kid" who fell victim to senseless street violence. She said it would mean something to his mother that the school board had acknowledged his passing.
Categories: Baltimore City, School Safety (Or Lack Thereof)
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Comments
Sara-
I really do enjoy reading all your articles in the paper and your postings on the blog, but I have to admit that your comment:
"I wondered, as I often do while writing homicide briefs on weekend shifts, how we would have treated his death if he were white or lived in Howard County" to be a little discomforting...
I guess I feel like it is a emotional statement that is rather one-dimensional. We all sort of recognize that there is a hierarchy of value on human life that is predicated on where you live and what you look like, and those of us who work in the system are on some level helping to address that issue, but it does not really work as a productive statement beyond condescending pity that panders to the already fragmented view of race that we all see Baltimore through.
It is tragic any time any child is killed from violence, be it a child in Howard County or in Baltimore City. That we all recognize the outcry would be slightly different for a white child in Howard County does little to address what the communities here in Baltimore City need: a sense of internal empowerment that demands better schools, better health and better treatment for their youths, independent of race or geographical location.
I am hopeful that Dr. Alonso (and Dr. Sharfstein) are addressing those community empowerment issues (the best they can) so that they will translate into stronger schools and communities so that comments like the one on the blog became moot and irrelevant points.
Posted by: David Ortiz | May 14, 2008 11:42 AM
David you are right. Internal empowerment. Things can only be made better when you start from within. Even if people made victims, how long do they remain victimized? Being black, I can only speak from that experience. There was a time when we were mistreated by people and the system. Now when we have more opportunities, we seem less capable to utilize them. There are people from poverty who rise above where their circumstances put them. Of course they had help, but they had to do it for themselves. No amount of government or non-profit help can help someone who doesn't have it in them (whatever it is) to help themselves.
Posted by: Heather | May 14, 2008 12:32 PM