Violence and Murder: Why We Should Take it Personally

Murder is easy--fictionally speaking, and a pretty nifty dramatic device. When a writer or movie director adds a corpse and a detective to a roomful of pretty people, we’ll get suspense for sure, romance perhaps, and certainly an hour or two of entertainment

Which is ironic. Because in real life, there’s no entertainment value in murder, though local TV news remains unconvinced of that fact. Murder is nothing but misery and waste.

The boy or man didn’t find fame in his lifetime. But he’s famous now, for a few days, anyway.

It’s a pity he’ll never know that television news vans gathered on Windsor in his honor, and reporters went door-to-door, hoping to mike up something of prurient interest. He was worth oh so much more to them dead than alive.

I know more about illegal sidewalk sandwich signs than local gangsters. So whether this was a gang-related murder or a murder that, by coincidence, took place uncomfortably close to the recent drive-by shootings, I can’t say.  So far, .

But it seems likely or at least plausible that, when killers set a man on fire and leave him to burn on the sidewalk of a major street, they’re not signaling the end of an exploit, but a beginning. With a promise of more to come.

After a little Internet research, I found the names of Altadena and other San Gabriel Valley gangs, and some have an eerie, child-like quality to them. A Chucky-like innocence that makes them seem all the more sinister.

According to an article I found in the L.A. Times from back in 1989, gang violence can take a town by storm. Apparently our town was just such a poster child, back in that day. Sheriff’s deputies strapped on flak jackets to patrol the very streets we now routinely walk our dogs and push the strollers.

So I wouldn’t dismiss, out of hand and conveniently, the idea that we have an escalating gang problem.

Over the past year, when a string of house and car robberies took place on the east side of Altadena, I remember thinking–nothing to worry about, that’s waaaaay over there. Until someone broke into my car, and suddenly, there was here.

For that reason, whether you live in Altadena east, west, or center, I wouldn’t consider the recent violence anywhere other than "here."

It’s funny. I heard helicopters this morning. Had this been even two months ago I would have assumed they were rescuing another hapless hiker. But now that’s no longer the first thing that springs to mind.