One Killed, One Wounded

The tragic shooting of 17-year-old Angelo Miller in the back by Cleveland police officer John Lundy in a parking lot at Lexington Village Apartments in Hough late one recent Thursday night was the confluence and result of a string of bad decisions and shameful inactions by a host of people that should have made the incident highly predictable to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention. Additionally, the shooting was — or should have been — highly avoidable. It simply did not have to happen, and if there was an effective system in place among the entities, Cuyahoga County Department of Children and Family Services, the Juvenile Court system, and the Cleveland Municipal Schools District that should be equipped to intercede with troubled youth early on it would not have happened.

Similar to so many other underprivileged kids, this young man fell through the cracks we allow to exist in the frayed fabric of what should be a social safety net. As brutal as it sounds, the amazing thing is that even more at-risk kids are not killed in Cleveland each and every year. And, as usual with a situation of this type, there is enough blame to go around ... starting with me and you for allowing the conditions of poverty, racism, and the lack of an effective educational system to persist. These conditions will continue to breed low goals and lawlessness for as long as we allow them to exist.

We can start with the fact that 16 years ago Cuyahoga County’s Department of Children and Family Services gave one-year-old Angelo back to his mother after taking him into custody on charges of neglect. Judging by this terrible outcome, the now loudly wailing and screaming mother should not have been allowed to try to raise even a houseplant, let alone a child — absent some help, guidance and continual mentoring by a qualified adult (i.e., a caseworker). She simply wasn’t equipped to do an acceptable job of childrearing (similar to many other underclass parents) so we’ve allowed the lowering of the standards and our expectations, so as to not take too many children into custody. The mother evidently cleaned up her act enough to meet the minimal (and probably very low) standards and the department washed their hands of the case … which, given the outcome that Angelo is now dead, was a mistake. New standards need to be developed and a new system put in place that keeps someone who actually knows how to raise a child in marginal family’s business — for the long-term safety of the child.

I know that if we, as a society, intervened in every case of horrible parenting, the system would soon be overwhelmed with children ... at least for one generation. But that is exactly what former US Senator Bill Bradley suggested well over a decade ago; that we devise a method whereby we do intervene in every case where there is a suspicion that the parent(s) appear to be clueless in regards to proper childrearing. He suggested that we establish “Children’s Camps,” safe, secure and nurturing environments where both the newborn child and mother are housed, and where middleclass values are inculcated. He, along with many other experts, say this would virtually eliminate the underclass in virtually one generation. Call the money spent on such a massive effort reparations, because the problem certainly is a legacy — a direct and unmistakable descendant — of slavery, the slave mentality, and all that pernicious institution did to a many members of the Black race.

Think of it, in one generation the lives of future children that are going to be born to parents that can barely read, possess little education and no love of it, and were, for the most part, themselves ill-raised could be radically changed. We could break the cycle of poverty, low goals and lower morality that produces outcomes like Angelo Miller, now dead from a policeman’s bullet. Yes, the effort would be Herculean, but nothing else we have attempted so far has worked for the underclass. To not take up the challenge laid down by Senator Bradley over a decade ago is to be, as the trite expression goes, “pennywise and pound foolish.” We’re going to pay for these ill-raised children sooner or later, one way or another; we’re either going to learn how to educate them for $10,000 per year, or house them in prison for $25,000 per year after they have become a threat to public safety and done some harm to society. We all can count, can’t we?

Just look at the now dead youth’s list of “accomplishments” in his short 17 years on the planet: Accused of assault against a teacher while still in elementary school (we also are left to wonder what a 13-year-old was doing still in elementary school); convicted of assault two years later; allegedly threatened a female student East High with a gun last May; wanted for missing a court appearance on auto theft charges at the time of his death; and arrested again on auto theft charges last month; and, while in the process of accumulating this track record, he fathered two children by two different minor girls. The startling thing is, the mother still doesn’t get it; she still refuses to accept the fact she did an absolutely horrible job of raising this child, instead looking for someone, anyone else to blame for his death that night. But I guess that’s fairly typical denial, Charlie Manson’s mother probably thought he wasn’t such a bad kid either.

But Angelo would have been better off had he been raised by a pack of wolves ... indeed, it almost seems as if he was. There is a ghetto culture out there that is severely lacking in morals, values and higher aspirations, and the only real solution is to extricate as many children from it as possible. Those two kids Angelo fathered? If nothing changes, they might was well have been given their prison numbers at birth ... so good are the odds they will eventually wind up with one as adults. Statistically, they are perhaps 90 percent assured of following the life their teenaged father led. In retrospect, Angelo would have been better off in a juvenile prison ... at least he would still be alive. It’s a sad commentary on our society that the safest place for some young, ill-raised Black men is in custody.

Why didn’t the juvenile justice system intervene at the first sign of trouble with Angelo? Because we, as a society, told it, in a very decisive manner, not to act, and we did it by our parsimony. We had other priorities for our public monies. For years we’ve allowed overcrowding and under-funding in the system that is charged with preventing such tragedies early on. Ditto the schools. If they were better funded someone would have said and did something so that at age13 he would not have still been elementary school, but no one was paying attention. Did his mother ever, in his entire school career, show up and ask any questions? Maybe she did, but somehow I tend to doubt it. Probably undereducated herself, she simply didn’t know what questions to ask. But now that Angelo is dead there are plenty of questions … and few answers.

We could start with why Angelo was in that parking lot at that time of night in the first place; but we probably already know the answer to that one — he most likely was up to no good. But does it follow that because he might have been breaking into cars that he should have paid for it with his life? No. He’s dead because we have “police” officers in America instead of “peace” officers, like they do in most civilized and enlightened first-world countries. What’s the difference you might ask. It’s this: a police officer stands in front of a potentially deadly vehicle and then when the driver doesn’t obey his command to stop he shoots, claiming that his life was in danger ... and it was, but all he had to do was step out of harm’s way, or not put himself there in the first place; whereas a peace officer would let the driver go, knowing that he could catch up with him later in a non-life threatening situation where no one would have to die. Indeed, the rules of engagement were recently changed in Cleveland after a fatal shooting and officers were told — actually ordered — not to put their lives in danger in this manner.

After all, this was only about stolen car radios at worst, but it turned deadly when the dynamic shifted from property to power. This was about who has the power of life and death and who has to obey or suffer the consequences. That’s just how things are late at night in inner city communities that are amazingly similar to police states. If the preceding is not true then why are officers allowed to drive around Hough wearing those black, Nazi-like, driving gloves that are against the rules? Can’t the police commanders control their officers? Can they stop them, or do they not care?

By all accounts Officer Lundy was a good cop, one not overly prone to violence. I live in the same neighborhood as him — which is the same neighborhood where the shooting occurred — and everyone who knows him has nothing but good things to say about him. Good, solid family man. The problem, of course, is that he was trained, like virtually all other police officers in this country, to shoot people who don’t obey immediately. It’s the difference between “police officer” and ‘peace officer.”

Now, contrast Cleveland’s method of policing with how they are doing it in Charlotte, NC. There, officers are looking at the records of juveniles and young men who are headed in a bad direction (like Angelo) and stepping to them. Not to arrest them, but to have a man-to-man, heart-to-heart talk. I’m told by a friend who has been part of the program that the conversation goes something like this: “Look, dude, you’re headed down a bad road, you’re going to wind up in the joint or we’re going to have to bust a cap in your ass ... now, before it gets to that point, let’s see if there is something we can do to help you out.” For many of these young men it’s the first time in their short lives that anyone in a position of authority has reached out to them, and by all initial indications the program is working, and working very well. Of course the community has to buy into the concept and then invest some resources to help the young men ... something I doubt if we would be willing to do here in Cuyahoga County because we are not too good at math, but they are doing it in Charlotte, and it works.

But back to Cleveland and reality. Now throw into the volatile mix that fateful night the fact that over the years a concentrated effort has been made to keep Lexington Village a safe place to live. Surrounded by pockets of poverty, the now 15-plus years-old apartment complex has had to be proactive in terms of letting nearby malefactors know there is no tolerance for hoodlums who wish to prey on the middleclass residents; the place has a reputation that Officer Lundy probably felt had to be protected at all costs. He had to send a strong message: Don’t mess around in Lexington Village. However, the radio thefts and other break-ins could have been handled in a less confrontational manner and no one — except maybe some of the residents and the police — would have known there ever was a problem. Now, with the shooting the complex has earned a far worse reputation: As being an unsafe and downright dangerous place to live; innocent people can be killed by stray bullets. So, while Angelo Miller was killed by a single bullet, Lexington Village, and, indeed, all of Hough, was wounded by the same bullet.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldf@gmail.com
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