Conflict and Revenge Have No Schedule

There was a shooting Monday at around 1:30 in the afternoon that wounded five people including a three month old baby. The baby didn’t die so this may not qualify for the most tragic story of the year later. There may be something worst coming along. It’s not even hot outside yet. One of the things that always concerns me is the high number of people just hanging out during the middle of the day on weekdays. You can ride around and see entire blocks of people just sitting around like it’s a Saturday. I was going to make this post about the need for police officers to do a better job at spotting this kind of trouble during the day when the streets are less hectic than the evenings but I thought about it today and I didn’t think that was fair. Granted I have passed some blocks and thought to myself that something is going to happen around there if no one starts breaking up those groups of people standing around. I guess the police department deserves some of the responsibility for that. It doesn’t take a train detective to spot that. You just need experience living in the city.

The actual criminal act is a bit more complicated to snuff out because you never know who or what caused the conflict to begin with and how long it’s been brewing. It’s hard to blame the police for that or the woman for having the baby out near guys who were being targeted in a shooting. She was just an innocent bystander out in the middle of the day but even if she knew the other victims and had knowledge of who they were beefing with she had no idea to know when things were going to happen. People in New Orleans don’t plan rumbles to settle scores like they did on The Outsiders. I wish we did then everyone could just stay clear until it was over. Our statute of limitations on having issues with one another goes a lot longer because we have trouble letting things go. I remember people I knew in school holding on to something from the first day of class until the last week of the school year before they decided to get the person they were pissed with. Many times the person that they were mad with didn’t remember what they did to deserve the ass whipping they were about to get. All you could do is fight them off and hope someone refreshed your memory on what the hell happened. Even now as adults we run into people we remember from the past and have to wonder are these fools still upset. You just never know for sure.

For all we know those guys were targeted for something they did two years ago or two hours before the shooting. The police can’t stop that unless they turn physic and the neighbors really can’t either unless they can call and report two people being mad with one another so they can be arrested for future crimes. They can call now and report who they think pulled the trigger Monday but it’s still too late to bring back the deceased or take the bullet out of that baby’s leg. The only real solution is education, self esteem and death to that part of the culture that says conflict isn’t over until you get the last lick in no matter how long it’s been.