Crime Still No Picnic In Da 'Hood
I went to the church picnic Friday which was held across the street from the church at Frederick Douglas Park. The park is small because it’s tucked away between the dead end of 30th Avenue and Franklin Street on the west and Gilpin Street on the east. It’s one of those parks built years ago as part of a crime prevention movement which created parks in the middle of streets and cul-de-sacs in inner city neighborhoods. The theory was that criminal activity and drive-by shootings would decrease since cars couldn’t speed through the hood. The green space and playgrounds would attract children and families, driving the gangstas and hoodlums into the basements.
So there we were, enjoying the best of a home-cooked potluck meal: chicken on the grill and hotdogs for the kids, potato salad, deviled eggs, soda, etc etc., typical picnic flora and fauna. The elementary kids were laughing and playing on the small playground next to the picnic tables and we were all behaving just like theory said we should. There was no crime to be found, as long as we ignored the East side Oldies 13 and Surenos 13 gang graffiti, ("E/S O X3" and "Sur13" in the vernacular of the competing cliques), scratched in knife prints and black marker on the slide...and the kid with a black bandana over his face riding his bike up Franklin, then back down 5 minutes later. Except now black bandana has cruised into the park (did the crime prevention planners anticipate this?) and is hitting on the older elementary girls in the inept social style of a 7th grade middle schooler working the 5th grade crowd. I drift away from the grill and closer to the playground, eavesdropping on the conversation as the kids gather round. Black bandana notices me hovering and draws me into a one-sided conversation by pulling a gun out of his belt with the declarative, "I’m not afraid of you."
The other adults are oblivious to the failure of the crime prevention theory unfolding over by the sandbox. I just look at him as time stands still. With no one challenging his point, he’s clarified his identity as one bad up-and-coming gangsta. He puts the pistol back in his belt, and pedals out of the park and down the street. I look at the small crowd of children he's left hanging and a third grade boy looks to me with a question masked as a statement, "that wasn’t a real gun."
"No," I answer, "it was plastic, you could tell by how it clinked when he pulled it out."
"Yeah," he replies hopefully, and they start discussing the incident as they return to play, not so big a deal for "the least of these." I walk across the street into the church and call the police to inform them that the crime prevention theory isn’t working very well; the prodigal son is still lost, and we even tried a church picnic to lure him home. The 911 operator asks if they need to send an officer out and I tell them he’s gone already.
No one shows up. We’re on our own as we clean up the dirty cups and plastic plates and bring the cooler inside the Sunday school room. Another night falls on the Mile High City. We go home to dream fitfully through the long hours of darkness and pray for our lost boy, alone, hiding behind a black mask on a dead-end street. Crime prevention.