Baltimore is not the only simmering urban kraal - this one hits a little too closer to home.
It's going to get hotter...
“Go, set a watchman, Let him declare what he sees.”
Isaiah 21:6
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Posted on 04/28/2015 11:56:11 AM PDT by Iron Munro
TAMPA — Sitting on the front porch of her east Tampa home, Eva Bulmer spoke Monday about the gun violence that has struck her family three times in less than a year.
First there was her grandson, George Oglesby, who survived after he was shot several times last summer on a short street lined with low-rent apartments on the city's eastern edge.
Two weeks ago, a couple blocks away, two bullets knocked his older brother, Jarrod Coachman, off a motorbike. Before he died, Coachman told the cops who did it. They made an arrest. But the shooting didn't stop.
On Saturday, hours after Coachman's funeral, more gunfire erupted at a party in his honor on the same block where his brother was shot. Two were injured.
All of it is part of an alarming surge in violence concentrated in Tampa's poorer and largely African-American neighborhoods. Shootings and homicides are both up compared to the same time last year. Witnesses can be hard to find. Police and city leaders this month staged a march to build community relationships. Still, they have struggled to explain the problem.
Bulmer pegged it with one word.
"It's stupid," she said. "That's what it is to me. Stupidity."
A lifelong Tampa resident, Bulmer, 66, said she has never seen violence so bad. Where people used to settle disagreements with fist fights, she said, they now settle it with guns. She blamed a gangster culture, branded into young, impressionable minds, through "dirty music," and the "no-snitching" message that pervades the same.
"This does not make any sense," the certified nursing assistant said. "It used to be the old folks filling the graveyards. Not anymore. It's the young ones."
Coachman saw the reality of such sentiments when his brother was shot in July, his grandmother said. Police continue to investigate, but no arrest has been made.
The 23-year-old had a 3-year-old son. In the last few years, he had worked to obtain his high school diploma from Hillsborough Community College. In the last few months, he woke at 5 a.m., five days a week, to go to work for a construction company.
No one expected that violence would find him.
But on April 8, as he rode east along 21st Avenue near Cord Street, he heard a gun go off. He sped up, but the bullets moved faster. One hit him in the leg. Another punctured the base of his skull. At Carioca Court, he tumbled to the pavement.
Lying in a hospital bed, Coachman told detectives about a man he had seen on the street corner, Bulmer said. Tydarrious Kirkland, 18, had once been friends with Oglesby, but recently the two had feuded.
"George fell out with the boy because he started bringing a gun around," Bulmer said. Word spread recently that Kirkland had threatened the family. Then, the shooting.
Two days later, police arrested Kirkland on a charge of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon in connection with Coachman's shooting.
Coachman clung to life for a week. Doctors took the bullets out, but injuries to his head made his brain swell. He slipped into a coma. He died April 15.
Since then, Oglesby, 21, has blamed himself for his brother's death, Bulmer said.
"We calm him down and tell him, just cooperate with the officers," she said. "We have the law on our side, so we'll use that."
Kirkland remains in jail without bail. Detectives were working with the Hillsborough State Attorney's office to determine if they can file homicide charges against him, police said.
After she buried her grandson Saturday, Bulmer's family separated. The adults gathered at a relative's house. The young people went to the party on 49th Street, an impromptu street gathering that was meant to honor Coachman's life.
Police conducting a traffic stop on 50th Street heard the gunshots. They saw people running. A woman and a man were wounded. Detectives are working "good leads," police said. But still, no arrests.
Bulmer fears the "no-snitching" attitude will prevent justice in another case. And, in turn, more violence will happen. And someone else will lose a son. And another child will grow up without a father. She hopes she is wrong.
"A lot of people know who did that shooting," she said. "They want to blame the police. But the police are doing their job. . . . If y'all know something, tell it. It's not that you're a snitch. It's that you're saving somebody's life."
Barack Obama and Al Sharpton have not announced plans to visit the crime ridden city.
I wish black lives mattered to black people.
Baltimore is not the only simmering urban kraal - this one hits a little too closer to home.
It's going to get hotter...
The Watchman Ping List - FReepmail Old Sarge for details!
Calling gang violence “gun violence” — does violence to the language.
Black lives matter only when there’s political mileage to be gained. Otherwise, it’s just another statistic...
Too bad black lives don’t matter to progressive politicians who either think that intentions are enough or who are evil enough to buy votes by destroying families.
Where are the strong black fathers from the 1950’s in this picture? Now all that’s left are LBJ’s children savages.
Good point.
Whether intentionally or subconsciously, the characterization advances the leftist anti-gun agenda by subtly focusing some of the anger over these black on black killings away from the criminal and toward the tool used by the criminal.
Uhh, yeah.
Victims of “gun violence” or victims of “criminal thug violence”?
Seems to coincide with the popularity of rap / gangsta music.
You’re right..unless there is political gain these are just statistics...again and again and again.
You'd think the black community would have seen this when the police “stood by and did nothing to help the looting and destruction”.
Baltimore will gain another cash flow for favored leadership and Global opportunists as the revenue flows that these people will never see....nor benefit from in any way to really make the difference....because it's never met to make a difference for them.
The political talk will be encouraging as will the crumbs that might fall from the table...but there is no bailout for these people they expect to gain from this...it is not going to happen....any seat they might get at the table will be simply for show.
The fact that 1/4 of all Negro males have experienced arrest and imprisonment merely means that the cops are bending over backwards to NOT arrest, or at least attempt to correct the inappropriate behavior, of one or two more out of that 4.
Nonetheless IMNVHO, this administration is taking full advantage of the lawless behavior of its staunchest constituents in an attempt to bully the rest of us towards a more statist approach to everything.
The City of Baltimore is now a black-run city from top to bottom. For decades, it has always been a corrupt Democrat stronghold. O'Malley was Mayor of Baltimore, and then Governor for a total of 13 years. Nancy Pelosi's father, Tom, ran the place for years. Her brother was also the Mayor.
And yet the "problems" of the cell-phone savages are not the "fault" of the Democrats, but rather can be traced to "Republican" racism! The present Mayor of Baltimore is an Affirmative Action Anus. She blew this thing. Listening to her gobbledegook on TV is simply mind-numbing.
The only bright spot for Baltimore is Governor Hogan calling in the National Guard. The answer to this Obama/Holder/Sharpton inspired wave of violence is immediate suppression of the rioters with extreme force and the immediate stoppage of any form of government subsidy to those committing criminal acts. See how long those Black teen-age Baby-Mommas and their bottle-throwing looting Baby-Daddies continue to riot without Section 8, EBT, AFDC, Obamaphones, Supplemental Welfare, Free Medical Cards, Free Bus Passes, etc.
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