How do we Combat Premeditated Murder?
Image: Fox 4
Today is Wednesday, June 5, 2019. For most school districts here in Texas, we are just days into the summer break.
Two teenagers are dead.
A 17-year-old recent DeSoto High School graduate, weeks away from beginning his life as a collegiate football player at Jackson State University is dead. Leroy Hawkins III was murdered late Monday night at the hands of an 18 year old, who wanted him dead after an altercation. Reports are that Hawkins was shot up to five times as he sat in the passenger seat of a parked vehicle in Downtown Dallas.
Tuesday evening, 13-year-old Malik Tyler was simply leaving a gas station and walking to his Pleasant Grove home when stray bullets struck him. Two males decided to fire at each other from their respective cars and one of their bullets sent Tyler staggering toward his most familiar place – home. He arrived at his apartment, holding his chest. Neighbors tended to him while waiting for the paramedics. Tyler died shortly after arriving at the hospital.
Unfortunately this is not an unfamiliar summer narrative. Crime tends to go up in the summer and preservation of life seems to become the farthest thing from the minds of many gun-toting fools.
Of course social media is running wild with the boisterous fixers and the incessant arguers:
Fire the police chief.
Keep your kids at home.
Stop the black on black crime.
Premeditated is defined as Specific intent to commit a crime for some period of time, however short, before the actual crime.
When you stand outside of a person’s vehicle and fire five rounds – your intent is to kill. Whether you contrive these plans weeks before or just moments after being embarrassed – your intent is deliberate.
When you roll down your window and aim your gun at another vehicle – your intent is to invoke fear, to harm or to kill.
How do we combat premeditated murder? Life is not based on a “Criminal Minds” narrative. We don’t have “Garcia” sitting at every computer in Dallas, predicting what criminal will do what next.
How does the police chief combat murder? No, she doesn’t always choose the right words when addressing the public. At the start and end of each day, she is a black woman in a power position – and perhaps many black citizens want her efforts within the black community to be a bit more intentional and palpable. Chief Reneé Hall, too, is human and she can’t read the minds of nearly eight million Dallas citizens.
How do parents combat murders they don’t know are being engineered by confused and misguided individuals? I’m not a parent, but I can’t imagine the level of paranoia that must encircle the minds of loving and devoted parents, who want nothing more than to protect their offspring. Do you want them to lock their children in the house, sheltering them from the world? Should their job be to make them oblivious of the things that go on around them? I can tell you as an educator what kind of students those children become.
Let’s talk Dallas for a moment.
According to statistics, 24 percent of the Dallas population is black. About 24 percent of that 24 percent are between the ages of 15 and 17. Let’s say that roughly 35 percent of that group represents black males ages 15 to 17. This means that while two black males are responsible for the deaths of Hawkins and Tyler, several thousand black teenagers were busy not committing violent crimes.
When two black males are killed by potentially three black males within 48 hours – why is “black on black crime” the message we share?
Black on Black Crime is no more a thing than White on White Crime, Hispanic on Hispanic Crime, Asian on Asian Crime and so on. The difference: black people are more interesting, black people are more vocal and black people are more susceptible to condemnation.
The solution is not to blame the Police Chief of Dallas. The solution is not to encourage parents to hold their children hostage. My God, the solution is not to fill your statuses with Stop Black on Black Crime.
Perhaps combating premeditated murder is a strong feat, but there are plenty of things we all can do to promote stronger senses of self-love and purpose in our communities. Our children need to hear and see us compliment their positive efforts, moreso than be entertained by their antics and mocking like behaviors.
We must be up in arms about internal community strife like we are about national headlines involving police.
Most importantly, we must stop freely pushing damaging agendas around the country.
Dallas is an incredibly large city and like many cities in the United States – Dallas is still rather segregated. Crime, however, is not. While a murder is happening at a car wash in a predominately black South Dallas neighborhood - a familial suicide is being plotted in the whitest of suburbs, next door to the home where cocaine is packaged and sold, and just around the corner from the nicely landscaped home where child trafficking cases are quietly being investigated.
Naturally most people will discuss what is most familiar to them, but the self-separation and disregard for our own communities further promotes this ‘throw away society’ that we live in. Make that stop and perhaps a transition from killing to preserving will present itself.
We need not live scared because we can’t predict the evil intentions of those around us. Be cautious. Be aware. Don’t live in fear. Teach children the truth and demand that they make the most positive choices.
The only thing that should be premeditated right now is our desire to make our communities safer and more productive.
