Two rumbles in a week is a lot for a small town like Inglewood. The more talked-about one was last Sunday's earthquake, which I felt under my feet as I took my evening walk with the dogs. It was a 4.7, hardly notable on the scale of quakes (Richter and otherwise). But when you're standing at the epicenter, it feels like the end of the world. Or the beginning of the end, which is what I hoped against as I counted to ten and watched the sidewalk shudder and the trees sway in deference to the terrible energy lurking a few miles beneath the earth's surface that we all prefer to forget is there. Neighbors materialized, driven out of their houses by habit and a suddenly renewed fear that this might be the Big One. In Inglewood, of all places! Who would've thought? When the temblor passed and it was clear I wasn't going to die, I took a certain pride in the latest L.A.-centered jolt happening practically on my block. But when I got home I was disappointed by the coverage on the local news channels; broadcasters were interviewing folks in Redondo Beach, Long Beach, Rancho Cucamonga--anywhere but Inglewood and Lennox, which was ground zero. Guess we don't qualify for a rarefied event like an earthquake, though the same local news crews are only too happy to come to town for a car chase or a shootout. The mere possibility brings out the live-feed cameras like bread crumbs bring out pigeons.
Speaking of shootout, it was the first rumble in Inglewood that produced far more damage (but not more coverage, not initially). Hours before the quake, the Inglewood police converged on a loud party on Osage Avenue and wound up shooting and killing partygoer Marcus Smith. Smith was young, black and male, like virtually all 11 people killed by IPD since 2003; as was the case with all those people, the story emerging about the circumstances of his death is unclear, to say the least. The cops say he had a gun, witnesses say he didn't. The cops say he raised a gun at them, witnesses say he stumbled as he came downstairs and put up his hands to steady himself. The black press is reporting that police called other partygoers names, including racial slurs.
This he said-she said between the police and the community it's pledged to serve is ominously familiar, and in Inglewood, where the suspect fatalities totaled four in four months at one point last year, patience on the community side is running very thin. Inglewood police is up to its eyeballs in oversight--the Justice Department and the county Office of Independent Review are conducting seperate investigations--and Inglewood's police chief, Jacqueline Seabrooks, has pledged cooperation with all and sundry. Yet in the middle of all this, we get another shooting. If things don't improve dramatically around here very soon, folks in my neck of the woods will have reason enough to fear an unexpected but entirely predictable Big One.
The image associated with this post was taken by Flickr user Leopoly. It was used under Creative Commons license.
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I may be cynical, but I am more worried that more kids will get shot and nothing will happen. The "entirely predictable" thing for me is our apathy. Unless they shoot you on video (youtube?) like that poor kid in SF no one is going to riot.
Eigen the reason why kids can get shot in Inglewood, Watts, Compton and its not a big deal is because those communities don't get the coverage in stuff like earthquakes, happy features etc...that's the kind of stuff that makes you human to the public, to the police, to the powers that be.
If people did happy stories about Inglewood, because it's a great town then there would be outrage, not just in Inglewood but everywhere and then something could happen. As long as people who are black or brown in LA are only covered as statistics on LA Times Homicide blog this apathy will continue to happen. Every community needs good PR or the silly kind of fun story that makes you want to go visit.
If you view somewhere as a different world or a war zone when someone gets shot you go, "Oh yeah, because it's over there." When you become over there pretty much anything can happen to you, because you are no longer a human being.
Browne