Pubdate: Sat, 18 Dec 1999 Source: Baltimore Sun (MD) Copyright: 1999 by The Baltimore Sun, a Times Mirror Newspaper. Contact: http://www.sunspot.net/ Forum: http://www.sunspot.net/cgi-bin/ultbb/Ultimate.cgi?actionintro Author: Gregory Kane SHAME, GUILT SHOULD FOLLOW ANGER OVER 6 KILLINGS Anger Over Mass Killings Should Be Followed By Guilt Mass Killings Should Induce Guilt Anger Over Mass Killings Should Be Followed By Guilt Mass Killings Should Induce Sense Of Guilt WHERE'S THE anger? That's the question callers and letter-writers to The Sun have posed in the 13 days since five women were executed in East Baltimore's Belair-Edison community, allegedly by members of an O'Donnell Heights drug gang. Specifically, cantankerous citizens want to know why those who expressed such outrage at the recent fatal police shootings of Larry Hubbard and Eli McCoy have been noticeably silent on the deaths of Mary McNeil Matthews, Mary Helen Collien, Makisha Jenkins, Trennell Alston and LaVanna Spearman. Tavaris McNeil, Matthews' son, was found shot to death near his mother's home. Police have theorized that the four suspects in custody committed the killings to exact payment for a drug debt. So those of you who have reacted with anger to the killings are quite justified. You have the admiration of those of us who have reacted to the killings with a sense of sheer terror. Perfect love casteth out fear, the clerics tell us. Maybe perfect fear casteth out anger. Those of us who have family members involved in the drug lifestyle as either users or dealers face the prospect that we may pay for the debts of our loved ones with our lives. We haven't quite reached the anger stage yet. Drug dealers have taken their code of retribution to a frightening new level: executing those who have nothing to do with the business. That's scary. Also scary is the sheer stupidity of whoever it was who committed these killings. To collect payment on a drug debt, they execute six people. They bring down the wrath of an entire city - and probably the state -- and subject themselves to a manhunt almost unparalleled in Baltimore history. They now face murder charges that may get them the death penalty. And the stupid miscreants probably didn't get their money. Such idiocy is truly terrifying. But there are at least two other emotions Baltimoreans should feel in light of the horror of Dec. 5. Shame and guilt come most immediately to mind. We should all feel ashamed and guilty. We all know that the overwhelming majority of crimes are linked to drugs. Thus, our self-righteous anger aside, the six killings should hardly come as a surprise to us. But we should feel ashamed and guilty that, with all the data linking crime to drugs available to us, we haven't taken seriously the calls of some to decriminalize drugs and treat the problem as the public health crisis it is. A. Robert Kaufman, Baltimore's curmudgeon-in-residence and aging activist, has made this plea for years. He reiterated it during his recent campaign for mayor. Did we listen to him? Nah. Instead, we went for the candidates who advocated the same business-as-usual approach to the war on drugs, a war everyone knows we're losing. "I'm kind of getting tired of saying it," Kaufman said from his West Baltimore home Thursday night. He wrote his own letter to The Sun , taking to task those who have insisted that the only reaction to the Belair-Edison killings should be one of anger. "The killings will stop when the profit is taken out of drugs and addiction is treated as a public health problem," Kaufman wrote. He dismissed almost with derision those who have hinted that those who have protested recent police shootings might better spend their energies protesting the mass killings in East Baltimore. "Drug dealers wouldn't give a rat's patoot about a protest," Kaufman continued in his letter. He stopped reading from the letter and went on to rail against a society that focuses too much on punishment and not enough on prevention, noting the recent furor over juvenile boot camps as an example. "These kids have had too little love and caring in their lives," Kaufman continued, "and instead of giving them the love and caring they need, we subject them to the same macho violence they've been getting all their lives." State officials clearly dropped the ball by ordering juveniles sent from one abusive environment to another. Baltimoreans are blundering in the war on drugs as well. One segment of the population is mad at the cops. The other is mad at the criminals. Neither can see through the anger long enough to consider that what's needed to fight crime is a new and radical approach to the drug war. "Why," a Howard County (http://www.co.ho.md.us) woman asked me, "don't Baltimoreans use Church Hospital as an inpatient, long-term drug treatment center instead of closing it?" "Because people in Baltimore ain't thinking," I answered. If we were, we would use Liberty Medical Center for the same thing. But all we've gotten from city leaders is lip service on the subject of treatment on demand for addicts. And a chorus of angry rhetoric from the masses. - --- MAP posted-by: Doc-Hawk