The Outrage on “Thug” Life
By Albert B.
Kelly
In the last few days, I’ve
seen the headlines out of Jersey City about the shooting death of Police
Officer Melvin Santiago at the hands of Lawrence Campbell. Apparently Campbell,
who was a felon, assaulted a security guard with a knife, stole his gun and
then waited for police to respond to the robbery call. When Police arrived,
Campbell shot Officer Melvin at point blank range killing him and then fired at
other responding officers before being killed himself.
The death of a police
officer killed “in the line” brings enough heartache and anger in and of
itself. But what adds insult to injury here is the whole “thug” ethos
surrounding this crime. The shooter, Lawrence Campbell, boasted to witnesses
that they should watch the news because he was going to be “famous”.
This wasn’t a robbery gone
wrong, but a planned attack specifically designed to draw police response so
that Campbell could kill in cold blood-this was premeditated. But here’s the
thing; the day after the shooting there were curbside memorials around the
block from where the killing took place not to the police officer who gave his
life serving his community, but to the thug who killed him in cold blood.
Consider the assortment of
bottles, candles, and T-shirts with such messages as “Thug in peace”, “Live
life my bro”, “see u on the other side luv” and similar expressions of thug
solidarity. It makes you wonder what kind of people we’re actually dealing with
here that celebrate the murderer.
Behind this killing and
many like it, is a thug lifestyle that’s managed to spawn its own music genre,
dress code, language, hand signals, graffiti, economy, and rites of passage.
Take any one of these on its own and I’m sure you’ll find someone to defend it
as “art” or “culture” or a “symptom” of poverty.
But even if you’re willing
to go there, we’ll likely need an archeologist like we’re studying ancient
Egypt; someone to decipher the graffiti, interpret the hand signals, describe
the symbolism of “colors”, or translate some slang. For the rest of us on the
outside, the only thing we see is a dead police officer and people celebrating
his murderer.
But the killings and
violence and the gangs don’t happen in a vacuum. The killing and the violence
and the rage are celebrated in music, movies, on social media. It’s not about
black and white; after all it’s the white kids who spend tens of millions of
dollars buying gangsta rap and heroin. Too many times our kids are trying to
emulate what they see from videos and movies not realizing that these “actors”
return to their comfy mansions in the suburbs. This is where the so called
“keeping it real” mantra goes bad.
And it won’t work to tell
us that gangs and thugs have to sell drugs and shoot people because the minimum
wage is too low. The book “Freakonomics” describes how graduate Student Sudhir
Venkatesh spent a year imbedded with a Chicago street gang and after analyzing
“the books”, concluded that street-level drug dealers make about $3.30 an
hour…which is why most still live with their mama’s
So no, the killing and the
violence and the drug dealing are not out of necessity, it’s a choice. And when
thugs celebrate an individual who guns down a police officer in cold blood,
there’s nothing more to discuss here.
For every elected official
and policy maker who’s heard the nonsense about how the killing and violence
would stop if only the community policing were better; if only the right cops
were placed in this neighborhood or that neighborhood; if only there were more
jobs, if only…enough already!
Did it ever occur to these
individuals that the reason many communities don’t have the jobs is because of
the violence and killing? Why would companies want to come and people want to
live where the perception, if not the reality, is one of random violence and
shootings and lawlessness?
How about this; how about
they put down the guns, turn down the volume, pull up their pants, lower their
voices, and clean up their act and then maybe we’ll talk about what can come
next….not the other way around. And not when they light candles and scribble
graffiti to cop killers.