Sunday, May 18, 2008
Brutality crops up in silence at home
Shanna Flowers
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A week ago, on a sunny Saturday afternoon, a 29-year-old Roanoke man was shot to death as he stood in front of an apartment building on Hunt Avenue.
Hours later, in an incident believed to be related to the shooting, a 50-year-old woman was attacked at a convenience store on Williamson Road.
When an off-duty police officer spotted the suspects in the attack, he was viciously beaten and left unconscious. He remains paralyzed.
The absence of values instilled at home is bleeding into America's streets in the form of a vicious and cold-hearted violence.
Roanoke, as we saw last weekend, is not immune. Though police have not made arrests in the shooting, gunning someone down in broad daylight on a neighborhood block takes some audacity.
"The ruffians have definitely reduced the quality of life across America," said Carl Taylor, a national expert on youth violence. "Young men think they have a sense of entitlement to take matters in their own hands."
Taylor abruptly corrected me when I raised the specter of "urban violence" invading Roanoke. Location is not necessarily the issue, said the Michigan State University sociology professor. The issue is the type of violence.
Everywhere from big cities to suburbs to small cities such as Roanoke, a brutal, anything-goes violence is cropping up, Taylor said. Last year, a 16-year-old Roanoke boy was sentenced to nine years for taking part in group beat-down that left a 41-year-old man dead.
The 116-pound man was kicked repeatedly as he lay in a fetal position trying to cover his head, prosecutors said.
The group's motive? The man owed one of his young terrorizers $5.
"That's the flavor of the moment," Taylor added.
It's a flavor that a civil society doesn't need.
Some things can't be blamed on The Man or the system. I agreed with Taylor when he pointed out that "this still begins in the home base."
When parents don't set expectations or instill values and young people lack a basic respect for humanity, society pays the price with this ruthless behavior we see being unleashed on neighborhoods.
"Kids have no sense of right or wrong," he said. "There used to be shame. There's no shame."
Taylor added that peers of today's violent young criminals "accept anything."
He lamented the days when girls didn't fight, when thugs were ostracized, when some criminal behavior was just off limits.
"We had a good fight -- if there is a good fight," the sociology professor said.
But absent was the outright brutality that is becoming increasingly prevalent today.
"You had an honor among thieves," Taylor said of "ruffians" during his era when he was growing up in the 1960s. "You didn't hit old ladies."
By no means is 50 old. Yet the taboo that Taylor said once was shunned occurred in Roanoke hours after James Stokes was to shot to death in broad daylight May 10.
The mother of a man who the rumor mill had linked to Stokes' death was assaulted later the same day at the convenience store. When Officer Bryan Lawrence spotted two suspects in the store attack, he began chasing them.
He was in the process of catching one when the other assaulted the officer, leaving him paralyzed.
A search warrant filed in Roanoke Circuit Court said a shoe print was found on his head.
Police charged one man in the assault on Lawrence, and another man was charged with the assault on the woman.
"Young men don't respect anything," Taylor said. "Chivalry is dead."
And so, tragically, are too many young men.
Shanna Flowers' column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.
