Our View Tragedy should be catalyst to a_ect change

Our View

Tragedy should be catalyst to a_ect change

First off, let’s give West Memphis Police officers investigating the shooting death of a 16-year-old youth high praise for the professional manner in which led them to the arrest of a 22-year-old man found 358 miles away in Independence, Mo., just hours after the incident.

We’ve all heard this tragic story many times before where young black teens from low-income families and neighborhoods fall victim to violent crimes.

In many, if not most such incidents, law enforcement learn either illegal drugs are involved or are gang related.

In this particular Tuesday, June 28, death, West Memphis police responded to calls of a shooting in the 700 block of South Avalon.

When officers arrived, they found the teen lying unresponsive in the street suffering from a fatal gunshot wound.

A day later, the U.S. Marshal’s office and the Eastern Arkansas Fugitive Task Force apprehended Aaron Long, 22, in the Missouri town based on information given to them from West Memphis detectives.

Sadly, similar stories are told just about every day, particularly in cities such as Memphis, Chicago, Atlanta and many others where there is a high percentage of low-income, single family parents or grandparents trying to take care of dependent children with little to no supervision.

Over the last several years West Memphis, Crittenden County’s largest municipality, has seen an increase in the number of low-income residents as well as an increase in gang related activity, resulting in enhanced professional law enforcement currently under the leadership of Chief Donald Oakes.

Unfortunately, tragic situations such as what occurred Tuesday afternoon can be directly associated with gang related activity, drugs and gun violence.

These aforementioned issues can be attributed to a serious negative social environment involving single parent households, lack of responsible adult supervision, lack of discipline, lack of respect for each other as well as authority figures and overall lack of parental responsibility.

Nevertheless, there are those individuals associated with minority activists groups who use such tragedies to promote an agenda that blames these tragedies among minorities on the so-called “white privileged,” law enforcement, the judicial system and authority in general. There is a sense of entitlement that fuels the situations we are currently experiencing.

Rather than embracing ways to address these core issues that result in tragedies such as the one in West Memphis we watch those individuals who exploit such a sad situation by dramatizing it.

For instance, a spectacle was made of the crime scene where this teenager laid fatality wounded on South Avalon by a group of people, one associated with an organization calling itself “Disproportionate Minority Contact.” Instead of spending time addressing issues within the minority neighborhoods, these individuals were washing the pavement where there the teen fell as a way of expressing their emotions and cause.

It might be suggested that such concerned citizens focus their energies toward the real issues affecting their minority community in hopes of preventing more unnecessary losses of human life.

BIBLE VERSE

Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them. For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple. For your obedience is come abroad unto all men. I am glad therefore on your behalf: but yet I would have you wise unto that which is good, and simple concerning evil. And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen.

16:17-20

Romans