Heroin
As I purport not to make things up I would like to offer a correction to a recent post wherein I stated that a specific local murder had to do with anger when in fact I had no idea if anger was an issue or not. Also, I said the victim was shot three times point blank in the head. I made that up. I have no idea in which part of his anatomy the man was shot, the one found lying dead in the middle of 2500 Palmyra Street, New Orleans. Three times point blank was from another area murder that I have not mentioned, one which was suggested to be a revenge murder. Or I'm making that up too.
It is my idea that revenge murders, and intimidation murders, the latter being when people are silenced to keep them or their family members from testifying, are often carried out with particularly violent affect, multiple head shots and whatnot, to send a message, and one that is mostly very effective as very few people will testify against these unimaginably violent street killers. One intimidation killing can go a long way in suppressing the civic-mindedness of even the most upstanding member of any given neighborhood. This may be all wrong. I am making it all up. But as they are only my thoughts I make up I hope to plead to a lesser charge than the one I am guilty of when I blatantly change or make up facts.
It was two guys, young heroin junkies, that killed the man on Palmyra, and it wasn't out of anger but for the the man's late model Ford F150 pickup truck. The victim was 68-years-old.
I've been thinking about violent crime a lot lately because it is locally on the rise. Law enforcement seems less visible than it was for a few years. Crack cocaine is less the scourge of our neighborhoods (not because it is less in use but because the users are co-existing more comfortably with non-users) as heroin cycles back into the picture to be the drug of choice among the young, reckless children of forty-something crackheads. I've been watching particular young heroin addicts for a few years now but ignoring it, and news reports that call heroin the new threat I ignore too. Paying attention to facts is hard and sometimes ungratifying. Times were a little rough here during the economic grandness of the nineties. Now with recession the Iines at the food bank are spiking the graph. The poor are getting poorer. And with that anti-crack, heroin, making new dedicated customers by the day the face of local drug dealing changes, and its like we have to start over with the rudimentary stages of the greed and power struggle.
There are also some positive things happening here in this great New Orleans gumbo and someday I hope to relay to you a few of those things as well. If I can see my way to it.
Two weeks later, around the corner from 2500 Palmyra, in 500 block S. Dorgenois, two men walking watch a suspicious man approach. One man instinctively runs, the other doesn't. The man who did not run was shot dead in the head. He was a construction worker, father of nine. One of his daughters said he wasn't a stay around dad but he was a good man. She hoped someone would step forward with information, hoped his murder would not add to the long list of unsolved crimes. Three days later someone identified an 18 year old kid from a lineup. Police say they are being sketchy about details on purpose.
|
As I purport not to make things up I would like to offer a correction to a recent post wherein I stated that a specific local murder had to do with anger when in fact I had no idea if anger was an issue or not. Also, I said the victim was shot three times point blank in the head. I made that up. I have no idea in which part of his anatomy the man was shot, the one found lying dead in the middle of 2500 Palmyra Street, New Orleans. Three times point blank was from another area murder that I have not mentioned, one which was suggested to be a revenge murder. Or I'm making that up too.
It is my idea that revenge murders, and intimidation murders, the latter being when people are silenced to keep them or their family members from testifying, are often carried out with particularly violent affect, multiple head shots and whatnot, to send a message, and one that is mostly very effective as very few people will testify against these unimaginably violent street killers. One intimidation killing can go a long way in suppressing the civic-mindedness of even the most upstanding member of any given neighborhood. This may be all wrong. I am making it all up. But as they are only my thoughts I make up I hope to plead to a lesser charge than the one I am guilty of when I blatantly change or make up facts.
It was two guys, young heroin junkies, that killed the man on Palmyra, and it wasn't out of anger but for the the man's late model Ford F150 pickup truck. The victim was 68-years-old.
I've been thinking about violent crime a lot lately because it is locally on the rise. Law enforcement seems less visible than it was for a few years. Crack cocaine is less the scourge of our neighborhoods (not because it is less in use but because the users are co-existing more comfortably with non-users) as heroin cycles back into the picture to be the drug of choice among the young, reckless children of forty-something crackheads. I've been watching particular young heroin addicts for a few years now but ignoring it, and news reports that call heroin the new threat I ignore too. Paying attention to facts is hard and sometimes ungratifying. Times were a little rough here during the economic grandness of the nineties. Now with recession the Iines at the food bank are spiking the graph. The poor are getting poorer. And with that anti-crack, heroin, making new dedicated customers by the day the face of local drug dealing changes, and its like we have to start over with the rudimentary stages of the greed and power struggle.
There are also some positive things happening here in this great New Orleans gumbo and someday I hope to relay to you a few of those things as well. If I can see my way to it.
- jimlouis 3-04-2002 7:27 pm
Two weeks later, around the corner from 2500 Palmyra, in 500 block S. Dorgenois, two men walking watch a suspicious man approach. One man instinctively runs, the other doesn't. The man who did not run was shot dead in the head. He was a construction worker, father of nine. One of his daughters said he wasn't a stay around dad but he was a good man. She hoped someone would step forward with information, hoped his murder would not add to the long list of unsolved crimes. Three days later someone identified an 18 year old kid from a lineup. Police say they are being sketchy about details on purpose.
- jimlouis 3-08-2002 10:05 pm [add a comment]