Friday, October 13, 2006

HE MEANT TO SHOOT HER.
I wasn't going to post anything about this but with the new revelation regarding the man who shot 5-year-old Kaytlyn Avila goes right to an issue that needs to be addressed. I'm not going to mention this guy's name. According to what LAPD has determined after this guy shot up Cesar Avila, Kaytlyn's father, he turned around and was ready to leave. Then he changed his mind and went back to the car and fired directly at the little girl. This is just pure evil.

What's significant about this is the difference in public reaction between this shooting and the infamous Stephanie Kuhen shooting in 1995. If you're a student of this sort of thing, Kuhen's killing at the hands of the Assassins clique of the Avenues in HP made headlines all over the country and a lot of European papers and electronic media. It even prompted then president Clinton to pledge money to put an additional 100,000 cops on the nation's streets.

Notice the almost complete lack of urgency in the wake of the Avila killing. Certainly the LAPD is doing what it should by increasing patrols and hammering on the P-Stones and 18th Street to short-circuit the inevitable payback. But outside of that and the usual suspects making their inevitable appearance and making their usual noises, there's been nothing like the moral outrage that broke out after the Kuhen killing.

You have to wonder why. Could it because Kuhen was white and the shooters were brown? Or was it that the victim in this case is brown and the shooter is black? It looks like only a very specific combination of race qualifies a killing for moral outrage and this one doesn't seem to contain the correct ingredients to fulfill the formula.

And for all those people out there who don't like snitches, keep in mind that somebody dropped a dime on Kaytlyn's shooter. If that hadn't happened, chances are this guy would still be in the wind. Why is it nobody likes a snitch unless he's ratting out somebody you don't like?

Needless to say, the shooter is as green as a shamrock right now and he's probably in the deepest, darkest PC module there is. It will be interesting to see how all this plays out when the case goes to trial.