PRENTISS SMITH

Messiah Murphy's grandmother, Twyla Smith, said that he was a "fun-loving, mischievous normal kid." He loved to dance, and he loved his mom. He would always make you laugh and loved to watch cartoons."

Four-year-old Messiah Murphy was murdered in a drive-by shooting a month ago. He is another statistic in the ongoing violence that is taking place in black communities in Shreveport and in urban centers all over this country.

Black-on-black crime has reached epidemic proportions in many of these communities. No one is marching in the street. No one is peacefully protesting the death of innocent victims like Messiah Murphy.

But when a young, black man is killed by a policeman, people go crazy. They become animated. They march on city hall. The streets would be full of people protesting. If ever there was a time to be marching in the street, it was after the senseless killing of little Messiah Murphy.

The point is that all lives matter, and little Messiah's life mattered just as much as Travon Martin's, Michael Brown's or Eric Garner's life. His grandmother said, "He's going to be missed dearly, and I just hate that he's not going to be able to live out whatever his potential was." We'll never know what he could have been, who he could have been or who he was supposed to be because someone took that from us."

The tragic slaying of 4-year-old Messiah Murphy is heartbreaking. It is symptomatic of the scourge of black-on-black crime that has enveloped neighborhoods all over this city and all over this country.

City Councilman Jerry Bowman said what so many people were thinking: "Tonight is horrific. It's not bad, it's horrific," said Bowman. "An innocent child didn't ask for this. And no one else does, but this should be an eye-opener for a lot of us. The person who did this, this should be an eye-opener for that person as well."

It is truly a sad situation when the babies of this country are not safe in their homes or in the cars of their parents and grandparents. I have 3-year-old and fouryear-old grandsons whom I simply adore. I cannot imagine the pain and devastation that Ms. Smith and her family are going through. But it is not only the babies, it's all of us. We are all dealing with an epidemic of violence that has left so many of us in a state of shock.

Maybe it's time for all of us who believe in law and order to take to the streets to show the criminals that we are tired and we are not going to take it any more. That is easy for me to say, but hard for people who are literally under the gun to take any action for fear of retaliation.

The tragic truth is that black-on-black crime, especially the black murder rate, has long ago reached epidemic numbers.

In Shreveport, these killings are not taking place on Ellerbe or in Southern Hills or even in my community of Steeple Chase.

No, this violence is taking place in the predominantly black neighborhoods of Queensboro, Cedar Grove and Motown. These neighborhoods have become killing fields that are under siege.

There are many communities in this country that are dealing with — I am sorry to say — young hoodlums who have no respect for themselves or for anyone else. Many of them are young men who have either dropped out of school or have been involved in low-level criminal activity. They seem to have no direction or no hope. They are more likely to be black and unemployed or unemployable.

Leaders are going to have figure out ways to intervene and interdict in the lives of these individuals. If they do not, we will find ourselves spending more money on the criminal industrial complex, more money on defending ourselves and protecting ourselves from what will become a growing underclass of disgruntled young men with nothing to do or no place to go.

Sadly, I think that is where we are headed if we don't figure out a way to stop the scourge of black-on-black crime. It is destroying lives and making people anxious about their basic ability to live in a safe environment.

People in these neighborhoods are afraid to speak up for fear of retaliation. I have never seen anything like it in my life — whole communities cowered down. A lot of these crimes are being done by repeat offenders — people who have been in and out of the criminal justice system for most of their lives.

When people do the crimes, they ought to do the time. The problem now is that jails are full. Prosecutors and judges are having to offer plea bargains to individuals to whom they would not ordinarily offer them.

Prosecutors are locking up non-violent individuals whose only crime may have been that they sold drugs or used drugs, while continuing to let murderers, rapists and child molesters out of jail. Americans are willing to pay to incarcerate people who commit violent crimes. They don't see the rationale in warehousing non violent perpetrators. It is too costly and unsustainable.

Four-year old Messiah Murphy's name is another name that will be added to a list of innocent victims that will continue to grow if leaders don't figure out a way to stop it. I don't know the answer, but I do know that it has a lot to do with home training and upbringing.

Young men, especially young black men, are increasingly growing up in homes where there is no strong male influence. There at too many children, especially black children, who are being born out of wedlock. This leads to a lot of the pathologies that we see in the black communities. It's a fact that if you do not control young men when they are young, you are not going to be able to control them when they get older.

Young black men are filling up jails all over this country, and I would submit to you that a majority of them come from fatherless homes. If we could change this one dynamic, I believe we could change the outcome of many of these young lives.

Seventy percent of all children born in black households are born out of wedlock. That is a staggering number.

And although out-of-wedlock births are increasing in the white community also, it is still two times less than those of black families. There is not at epidemic of gun violence in those communities.

Leaders are going to have to figure out ways to engage the affected populations. It is vitally important that the powers identify the aforementioned root problems of babies having babies and those babies having babies with no parenting skills. This ultimately leads to the pathologies that are gripping black communities in Shreveport and other urban areas around the country.

Men are going to have to be men. There are just too many daddies and not enough fathers. Black men like my father and grandfather and a lot of my contemporaries have become an endangered species. They just don't exist anymore. That is tragedy for many of the young men who are committing these acts of violence that grieve us all. At the end of the day, these violent acts are more symptomatic of the bigger problem — no fathers in the home.

Messiah's death was one of several shooting deaths in the past few weeks. Fifteen-year-old Leondre Spates was shot and killed Saturday near Hearne

Avenue and Quinton Street. A man was found dead in the parking lot of the tennis courts at Highland Park Monday. He'd been shot in the head. Police are treating his death as a homicide.

Finally, I will leave you with Ms. Smith's poignant and heartfelt words. She said, "What we want, the community can't give us. We want our grandson, son, nephew, brother — we want that back, and we can't get that back.

"But what we can do is use Messiah's death as a catalyst for change in Shreveport. We used to look out for each other. We need to go back to when people looked out for each other.

“I really want whoever is responsible caught and brought to justice. I just want the violence to end. It's getting to be almost expected for deaths to occur every day in Shreveport due to senseless gun violence. I don't want it to become normal."

I agree with Ms. Smith. I don't want it to become normal. And that's my take. smithpren@aol.com

 

THIS ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED IN THE August 28 ISSUE OF FOCUS SB - THE INQUISITOR.