Letters to the Editor
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every bit as dangerous
Do you have Bloods and Crips, where you live?
Crips don't carry "smiley chains," they carry machine guns. My mom's friend was robbed in broad daylight outside a swanky store as part of a gang initiation; a few years ago, a woman was shot in the head in the parking lot of the Oak Court Mall as part of a gang initiation. My teacher was carjacked, strangled, and run over repeatedly by three Violent Crips. Last year in a single week in midsummer, 6 children were killed by crossfire in gang turf wars in Orange Mound. One little boy was shot dead in his mother's arms by a stray bullet that came through a window.
If you really think "these nomads are every bit as dangerous as the Bloods and the Crips," you're either living in a dream world or stating your case very badly.
I also like the notion that there is nothing redeeming about street culture, yet for some reason middle-class adults (a nineteen-year-old is an adult) with good families and plenty of money are irresistably drawn to it. Gosh, those nineteen-year-olds sure must be dumb to stick around and become victims of their own violent culture when they could just head home and get free meals and fresh laundry from mom. It's all because of lack of supervision, you know. Those kids; they'll eat you while you sleep if you don't enforce a curfew.
I picked up a copy of "The Violent Years" for a dollar in the bargain bin at Walgreens recently. It was a hoot, just like this article. She's from a good family! Class president by day, gang-leader by night! I especially liked the scene where the girls are hired to vandalize the school by mysterious "interests" (Commies?). If you enjoyed this article, check it out, it's sixteen dollars cheaper than Denfeld's book.
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Blunt Criticism of Two Objections to the Article
Having read the article and the Editor's Choice letters, let me throw in with the crowd that's sympathetic to the author's concerns. Keep in mind she interviewed plenty of these kids, which takes some courage and some street smarts.
(1) Frankly, I don't care if she demonizes D&D and other fantasy RPGs. I was around the gaming industry throughout my childhood, eventually working at a store in college, and I think there's plenty of room to criticize it.
The games are almost always violent--in fact, in most cases violence drives them. Characters grow in wealth and power as fast as they can 'kill stuff'. At any rate, they are generally escapist, trading on artificially inflated senses of self-worth and self-importance. With some exceptions people are drawn to these games because they want to create a world where they're pretty, or brave, or smart, or rich, etc. Otherwise they'd just go ahead and focus on their actual lives. Lots of people are similarly escapist. But, they watch TV, they don't brandish smiley chains.
Again in a significant number of cases (we should be concerned with this number because it is plenty big enough), gamers aren't exploring characters, they're hiding in them. To put it bluntly, kids play make-believe, then they grow up.
By the way, this is not anecdotal evidence any more than a survey of anything is anecdotal. I listened in to a lot of conversations from the counter. A clear and disturbing pattern of violent, narcissistic and 'magical' thinking emerged--the kind of trend that has a very dark history when it is nourished.
(2) I've also spent a lot of time working with youth, and I've seen kids from stable, supportive families take drastically different approaches to the unpleasant discovery that they're one in a few billion. A lot of bad decisions involve drugs and sex, but some kids suck up into their personal fantasy worlds. These worlds can easily drift beyond the periphery of acceptable behavior, especially when a community forms.
It's not just troubled kids, and for what it's worth, I don't see the point in even making the distinction. You're going to trip all over yourself if you try to end all manners of bad or abusive parenting, big or small, real or imagined. Sure you can do some good here, but you'd better start trying to figure out salvage strategies for after the fact.
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Yep, Jim, Myth ...
A myth may well have a seed of truth at its origins.
The seed of truth in the article you quoted is this. There were some fatal beatings. There were some decapitions. Police currently suspect street "kids." That's all the truth you have to support your fantastical theory of an epidemic of street maniacs. Before you start cowering for fear of modern-day Thugees, perhaps you should ask yourself a few questions:
What evidence is there that both sets of crimes were committed by "street kids"? What evidence in there that the same "kids" or gang of "kids" committed all of these crimes? What's the evidence that all of the decapitations were committed by the same people? Is there evidence that some of the decaptitions are copy-cat killings? How do we explain such a radical change of tactics from mob attack to decapitation? (I doubt that D&D or "fantasy" figures prominantly.) And even if one gang did, for some reason, decide to start defending their turf via decapitation rather than the traditional beat-down, where's the evidence that these crimes are part of a larger, nationwide epidemic?
Given the evidence available to the public (and if there's more, please provide links), it's just as likely that the beatings are turf-related killings while the decapitations are the work of a serial killer. Heck, it could even be a serial killer who is one of these nomads. After all, the same kind of abuse that drives kids to run-away is often associated with the kind of abuse that turns people into serial killers. But you see, I'm just spinning another (albeit more likley) myth (serial killer) w/o evidence, so I'll just withold judgment on both hypotheses.
As for Denfield, she's not a sociologist, she's not an anthropologist, she's not an ethnographer, she's not a criminologist, and she's not a police detective. As far as I've been able to learn, she's a feminist, a writer, and a Golden Gloves boxing champ. In short, she lacks the experience and expertise to do anything but transcribe anecdotes (and perhaps strig them into a compelling narrative).
To be fair, as a writer she's probably a decent academic researcher (as opposed to a field reseracher), so maybe her book itself has the crime statistics and sociological data to show that these groups of punks really are as dangerous organized criminals like the Bloods and Crips, but this interview certainly has none.
Still, I'll give the book a look-see when my library gets it.