Posted on 10/05/2002 8:49:51 AM PDT by keats5
MILWAUKEE (AP) - The bloodshed began when a boy hit Charlie Young Jr. with an egg and he responded by punching a 14-year-old in the mouth and knocking out a tooth. But in Milwaukee's rough Midtown neighborhood, lined with rusting cars and homes with broken windows, rotting wood and peeling paint, something like that does not go unanswered.
According to police, a mob of boys as young as 10 set upon Young and bludgeoned the 36-year-old man to death with broomsticks, folding chairs, a milk crate and even a stroller on a porch where he had tried to take shelter. One boy then dumped his blood-soaked shoes down a sewer grate, and another ran home because his mother was calling.
The attack last Sunday night has stunned the city and led authorities, parents and residents to wonder where they went wrong.
District Attorney E. Michael McCann said the overwhelming reaction is sorrow. "Sorrow for everybody. For the deceased, for the boys, for the community," he said. "These young men have written off their futures for decades."
The questions go beyond the boys: In criminal complaints Thursday charging seven teenagers and a 10-year-old with reckless homicide, police say at least two adults watched the youngsters arm themselves and wait for Young in an alley. None of the witnesses called police. Two additional teens were charged Friday with reckless homicide, bringing the total to 10.
Erinn Payne, 22, who has lived in the neighborhood her whole life, said she saw the youngsters on the porch, attacking what she thought was an animal.
"Just to come home to trouble every night gets kind of tiresome," she said. "People are always fighting or arguing, there's always something going on."
The poverty rate for the area is 55 percent, more than triple the rate for the rest of the city. A block from the crime scene, homes with green gardens and brightly colored shutters are being built - symbols of urban renewal that have not spread to the neighborhood.
"You can build as many projects as you want down here," resident Andre Newson said. "It's still not going to help the people in the neighborhood."
An editorial in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Thursday called on city leaders to "do more than wring their hands. They must launch a campaign to reclaim from young thugs the neighborhood ... where the beating death happened."
Alderman Fred Gordon said the neighborhood hasn't seen a crime of this magnitude before and must not again. "We are not going to be cowed by this horrendous act," said Gordon, who represents Midtown. "We're going to have to step forward."
Mayor John Norquist said the children's families obviously failed them. None of their parents appeared for the boys' initial hearing, though most were in court for another appearance on Thursday.
"Let's get into the families in the neighborhood and make sure parents are doing what they need to do," Norquist said.
Juvenile Court Commissioner Dennis Cimpl blasted one boy's parents, saying they had "neglected, refused, and are unable to provide adequate supervision and care for this young man."
But the parents said they do the best they can. Many are single mothers and some work the night shift. The parents of the 10-year-old said he sneaked out of the house.
"They're making a butcher out of a 10-year-old boy and a group of boys," his father told the Journal Sentinel. "Kids are going to be kids."
Police Chief Art Jones said police already enforce the law in the neighborhood and ticket children for curfew violations. But some residents say the police presence always increases when a violent crime makes the news and fades after the TV crews leave.
Common Council President Marvin Pratt said the council will look at the police budget for ways to put more officers on patrol in the neighborhood, and will try to give more grants to community organizations.
Brandy Dudley, 33, the half-sister of the 10-year-old and a 16-year-old expected to be charged, said the boys don't have nice homes, video games or toys to play with.
"All they have is to hang on the streets," she said. She wondered why adults didn't step in, asking: "Why didn't someone call 911 when they seen these kids coming through the alley with all these weapons?"
AP-ES-10-04-02 2024EDT
(Excerpt) Read more at ap.tbo.com ...
Because they were worried that they were next?
A mob of black children and teenagers in a black ghetto did a Soweto-style gang attack on an innocent black victim, killing him.
When I was actively practicing law a decade ago, my first court-appointed case was an identical nonfatal incident in Greensboro - of a middle-age black man crippled in a gang attack by black teenagers clubbing him with impromptu weapons in a black neighborhood.
It is time to tell the truth about beyond-fistfight violence in America - rather than letting the Left lie that it's typically nonminority middle-class kids "going postal" at school on classmates just like them.
Good thing these peole were not around during the depression, they would have known all about poverty. We never killed anyone, never stole anything, went hungry many a time. This is what the socialists have wrought upon this country.
They're making a butcher out of a 10-year-old boy and a group of boys," his father told the Journal Sentinel. "Kids are going to be kids."Poor people can still be good parents. Poor people can still have good morals. More government intrusion into families will not help, arguably, that intrusion has only added to the problem of broken homes."Let's get into the families in the neighborhood and make sure parents are doing what they need to do," Norquist said.
"Just to come home to trouble every night gets kind of tiresome," she said. "People are always fighting or arguing, there's always something going on."
Good moral religious upbringing in the home, respected by the government (but not done by the government) is the preventative answer for the long term.
Quick and severe justice for the perpetrators is one answer IMHO for the short-term. Treat them like Billy the Kid and then display their bodies publically like they used to lay out criminals in the old west before burial.
The answer should be no more children for irresponsible, abusive and neglectful people. In the long run, the kids suffer, too.
The liberal-socialist effort to separate the "church" from the "state" has done nothing but separate American from her soul.
Thats because they did butcher a man.......I've got kids and they sure as h*ll don't behave like this. Really pathetic the excuses being made for these thugs.....no video games is an excuse?!?
There is a real difference in how white people would have reacted to a gang of skinheads murdering a man in their community and how the blacks have responded.They feel sadness for these punks.......give them the same status as the victim.
There's the problem in your ghettos......stop protecting your dope-dealing murdering punks and start demanding civil behavior from your children, stop accepting, condoning and excusing the illegal activities, school truancy, loitering and laziness of them. You might find they are capable of becoming a valuable asset to society when you demand that of them..... JMO of course.
Hey Streisand.......now's your big chance....go to Midtown and buy them all a nice home, vidio games and toys.
A blind man could see it from the bottom of a well at midnight during a total eclipse.
They were raised as good Democrats. Rules/Laws dont' count. Nothing counts but winning. ANYTHING goes. Morals and Law are a white thing.
Sadness, hope living side by side
Habitat for Humanity houses, CityHomes project lay foundation to improve area
By VIKKI ORTIZ
vortiz@journalsentinel.com
Last Updated: Oct. 4, 2002
In the past week, an image has developed of the neighborhood where children are accused of beating Charlie Young Jr. to death: a blood-spattered porch, anger, truancy and kids carrying around broomsticks. Chaos.
But a little more than a block from the site of the beating, overflowing flowerpots hang from planters. A young boy gives his friend a ride on the back of a bicycle. And residents - some of whom have paid more than $100,000 for their homes - hang up signs asking people to remove their shoes before entering. There is order.
"We have absolutely fantastic neighbors, and for the most part, things have been good around here," said Vevette Nwagbaraocha, a stay-at-home mother who lives with her husband and three children on W. Vine St.
Nwagbaraocha and other residents said they have worked too long and hoped too hard to let the killing undo the revitalization and cleanup of the area in recent years. Employees at Habitat for Humanity - which has built 100 homes, 12 this year, for impoverished families in this section of Milwaukee - said Young's death actually serves as inspiration.
"It just creates a greater resolve to work harder," said Jean Leslie, executive director for Milwaukee Habitat for Humanity.
Across the country, news reports of Young's beating have depicted N. 21st Lane exactly as it looks: broken police barricades left behind on the curbside, litter strewn across lawns, and plastic grocery bags stuck in broken fences.
It was on this street that a mob of more than a dozen youths attacked Young, hitting him 50 to 60 times with mops, tree limbs and other makeshift weapons Sunday, according to officials.
But a block south is CityHomes, the largest planned development of single-family homes in the central city in the last two decades.
Nwagbaraocha and her husband, who are African-American, bought their home here 31/2 years ago because they wanted a nice place to raise their children, in an area where they would be surrounded by people who look like them. CityHomes was a "dream come true," she said.
For the most part, the dream has lived up to its promise. On weekends, Nwagbaraocha often sees one neighbor help another with some gardening. Her husband volunteers to shovel neighbors' driveways. The subdivision is holding its annual block party next week.
There have also been disappointments. In August, a stray bullet hit the outside of Nwagbaraocha's living room wall while the children were home with their grandmother. Then there was the beating.
Nwagbaraocha said the dangers nearby are upsetting, but she doesn't regret her decision to move there. Now is the time to invest in the area - taking care of homes, building recreation centers and volunteering for other residents, she said.
"The bad things that happen, although tragic and very painful, are going to happen no matter where you go," she said. "I just believe that we as a people have to stand together and be strong."
Four blocks away, Christina Harden welcomes her 13-year-old daughter home from school in a house she spent 500 hours helping to build. Harden, a single mother of two, was required to do the work as part of the contract for her three-bedroom home with Habitat for Humanity.
It frustrates Harden to think that after all of her work to bring something well-kept to the neighborhood, people just down the street aren't trying.
"We've built these houses from the ground up, and some people just don't care about what their kids do," Harden said.
She said she doesn't think it will take that much to improve an area, and she still believes her entire neighborhood can get better.
"You just have to give a damn," Harden said.
Leslie said the beating will not affect plans for more houses. Construction on several homes began in the area in September and will continue, officials said.
And Katrina Woods, who lives in a Habitat for Humanity house at 25th and Brown, said she plans to keep stopping at the corner grocery store where the youths accused in the beating were known to loiter.
"I walk right by them," Woods said of the loiterers. "You should be able to enjoy your home."
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