Recently, I ran into a childhood friend and asked what he’d been up to. “Just came back from another funeral,” he answered. I shook my head, wondering what violent act had cursed our community this time.
You see, for many in South Los Angeles, it is more common to hear about death by the gun than by natural causes.
“I’m tired of seeing these young brothers buried,” he added before I could ask the details about another inner-city life cut way too short. Actually, I didn’t need to ask. I was sure it was just a different version of a story I knew all too well: The temporary silence of the night is interrupted by automatic gunfire.
A black male body drops. Loud cries of despair bounce against angry shouts for retaliation. Faint sounds of sirens grow louder as the emergency vehicles close in on the scene. A sudden beam of light from the hovering police helicopter turns the dark street into an eerily bright spot on the city map. Soon, yellow caution tape sets the boundaries and, eventually, a white sheet covers the lifeless victim. Disturbingly, the triggerman could be a gang banger, a neighborhood watchman or a police officer. And lately, the lines between them seem to have gotten more blurry.
When my friend sighed, my thoughts transitioned from the people directly involved in this type of community violence to those on the sideline who witness it by sight or sound.
What goes through the young, impressionable mind of a little girl who constantly hears the sounds of gang-related gunshots just outside her bedroom window? What is the teenaged boy feeling while huddled with his friends at school asking if any of them heard about the Florida kid who was shot and killed on his way home from buying a bag of Skittles?
And what about the pain of the parents whose young son, despite being unarmed and having his hands up, was shot multiple times and killed in the street by an officer of the law?
With tragedies like these being witnessed, I am not surprised that more and more people from the inner cities are being diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), despite having never ventured near a battlefield. Then again, we did see police in military vehicles with roof-mounted machine guns ready to shoot as they patrolled the streets of Ferguson, Mo.
We did see camouflage-clad police snipers pointing laser-scoped rifles at unarmed citizens who assembled to protest the excessive force a policeman used. Though on a smaller scale, I think this is not unlike the experience of many citizens on the sideline in the war zones of Iraq, Afghanistan and Gaza.
As my friend walked away, I wondered how a lifetime of tragic events in the “hood” had affected him. I thought of myself and some of the things I had seen growing up in the inner city. And I contemplated ways to lessen the likelihood of our children and their children becoming a part of a story I knew all too well.
This guest column is by Larry Stiner Jr., the eldest son of Watani Stiner.
