Shot In The Dark: The Hometown That Dare Not Speak It's Name

May 09, 2005

The Hometown That Dare Not Speak It's Name

The Strib's Tony Kennedy writes a piece on the home neighborhood of the two "men" who killed Sergeant Jerry Vick last week in Saint Paul.

It's interesting.

Harry Jerome Evans Jr., 32, left the streets of K-Town for St. Paul in 1998 or 1999, said Michelle Greene, his first cousin. She said he was a year or two out of prison and wanted to find a job and a place of his own...Harry Evans Jr. last visited his family on Gladys Street in K-Town during Christmas 2003, bringing with him a girlfriend and their newborn baby.

The hard-boiled conservative who lives in the inner city and whose house still has two of its three bullet holes from a drug-related drive-by shooting cries "Baloney! He came up here because there's great welfare benefits and the criminal justice system is notoriously lax".

The media critic in me wonders how selective or inadvertently omissive Kennedy has to be to show Evans as just a regular guy whose life spun out of control, and why we're getting this bid from the Strib to humanize a person who just killed one of our cops.

And a part of me wants the rest of the story:

Ella Greene said Harry Evans' father, Harry Sr., died in a freak swimming pool accident while in the Marine Corps when Harry Jr. was 5 or 6. He was raised by his mother, Beatrice, who died in the mid-1990s, when Evans was serving time in prison for attempted murder and attempted armed robbery. Michelle Greene said she thought the prison sentence had to do with an assault on a pizza delivery man or the driver of an ice cream truck that took place in the neighborhood.

Georgia Evans said Harry was escorted from prison in handcuffs to see his dead mother at the funeral home. He wasn't allowed to attend the funeral, she said.

Michelle remembered that he found a good-paying temporary job when he left prison in the late 1990s, moving in with them on Gladys Street. She said he bought an Audi 5000 automobile and would let her drive it.

It may be just me, but I don't think I've seen coverage of Sgt. Vick's life in this sort of depth yet.

Stop me if I'm wrong.

UPDATE: I've been stopped.

And let me elaborate a bit; when I say "I want to see the rest of the story", I mean the whole rest of the story:

They come from a crappy neighborhood and a dicey background. The article does a commendable job of explaining this. Now - what led them to Minnesota? To Saint Paul? A simple "I want a new, better life?" Or is the old theory, that the Twin Cities' combination of generous welfare benefits, skimpy prosecution and a large urban welfare warehouse makes for a fertile market for petty hoods?
It's almost become a media cliche - the friends and relatives of a heinous perp intoning "He is pretty much a regular guy, I can't believe he did this..." - even though their friend/relative has a rap sheet. Is it denial - which would be natural and understandable, by the way? Did the perps have a secret double life as small-time hoods?
One story has it that the killers didn't know Vick was a policeman. So - why did these two men, described by their friends and relatives as people who they'd never picture doing what they did, leave the first altercation on Friday morning, then circle back in the dark to confront and kill a complete stranger, whether a cop or not?

Let me reiterate, to be perfectly clear in my motivations; let's do indeed humanize the killers. Because it was indeed not a couple of androids that shot Jerry Vick - it was a couple of humans whose lives went, for whatever reason, horribly awry.

I'm not of the "get over it" crowd that so dominates conservative social science - the crowd that thinks that taking responsibility for one's life and pulling one up by one's bootstraps is the universal panacaea to all of life's, and the world's, problems. Life is messy, sometimes. One can not always control the curveballs life throws one.

So what is it that makes a couple of humans - born with no more malicious intent than any other babies - end up on a dingy street at 2AM to blow away a complete stranger? A childhood spent without a father? Growing up in an urban welfare warehouse, in a dominant culture that fears young urban blacks but also can't show them a better idea, and with a secondary, urban culture that denigrates education and devalues fatherhood, and glorifies illegitimate parenting and crime? Mental illness? Addiction? Boredom?

Keep going.

Posted by Mitch at May 9, 2005 07:39 AM | TrackBack

Comments

You're wrong:
http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/5390710.html
http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/5391358.html
http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/5392297.html
http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/5392323.html
http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/5390548.html

Sgt. Vick has recieved a good deal of coverage in the Strib.

So humanizing criminals is wrong? I guess that makes it easier to cope, when you write off people as nonhuman and use sneer quotes when calling them men. Do they deserve sympathy? Probably not. I don't really know what led them to kill a cop. But they are still human beings, even if you detest what they did. Examining criminals as the people they really are isn't sanctioning the criminal act.

Ironic that by not caring a whit about how they got to this situation and denegrating them to non-human status, you are actually becoming the same sort of monster you want to make them out as.

Posted by: Jeff S. at May 9, 2005 10:44 AM

"So humanizing criminals is wrong?"

No, and actually that's a part of my post that I wish in retrospect I'd written differently. I was interrupted in mid-writing by having to get my son up and going; the thought process got sidetracked.

I AM interested in seeing these people as humans; their origins, their families, the people who know them outside their lives as criminals.

I'm also interested in knowing what made this/these guy/s circle back to murder a stranger in the middle of the night, cop or not. And in what brought them from their awful part of Chicago to Saint Paul.

I'm interested, in fact, in every vector that comes into and out of this story; my haste abbreviated things a bit much.

So I'll be updating the post just a bit...

Posted by: mitch at May 9, 2005 10:54 AM

Here's a test. How would the Stib coverage of these two cop-killers be different if they were two white pickup-truck-driving skinhead gunsmiths from Idaho? It would be a lot different, but Sgt. Vick would be just as dead.

Posted by: RBMN at May 9, 2005 11:50 AM

A good friend of mine sat on a Ramsey County Grand Jury for six months about five years ago. Even then the major bad guys in two of the three capital cases he heard were from Chicago.
As to humanizing the two who shot Office Vick, I don't think we are dehumanizing them by our repugance at their act. Humans are capiable of some terrible things.
But some try to excuse and cover up the true nature of other humans.
These two made a choice, to be involved in what they were doing. Some claim they came here to change their lives. But it would seem they only changed location. They made a choice to murder another human in what could be cold blood.
I hope they will change their lives, but in the mean time if it is proved that they did this dispicable act then I also hope they will never again walk free, changed or not.

Posted by: shawn randall at May 9, 2005 12:40 PM

Am I the only one who thinks Jeff S. epitomizes the term "elitist snobbery" by having an e-mail address "person_of_reason@yahoo.com?"

I also think it's ironical to have Person_of-Reason" and "yahoo" in the same e-maill address.

Posted by: Ryan at May 9, 2005 01:14 PM

>>"Ironic that by not caring a whit about how they got to this situation and denegrating them to non-human status, you are actually becoming the same sort of monster you want to make them out as."<<

Mitch - you killed someone? In cold blood?!

(Jeff, do you truly not see the difference between the moral failings of "disagreeing with Jeff", and shooting someone to death?)

Posted by: bobby b at May 9, 2005 02:29 PM

Ryan:
Thanks for the personal attack. I guess a tweak at the constant "person of faith" drumbeat by certain politicians and religious apologetics is either lost on you or deemed too offensive. Tough.

bobby b:
You know that's not what I'm saying. And it's not about me, despite what some here would like to turn it into.

Yahoos, indeed.

Shawn:
I agree.

Posted by: Jeff S. at May 9, 2005 04:08 PM

*snort*

Jeff, if you think that was a personal attack, you have skin so thin, it's gotta be transparent. For a person of reason, it's sure easy to push your buttons.

Posted by: Ryan at May 9, 2005 04:46 PM

Jeff, if that isn't what you are saying, then don't say it. Please endeavor to gain a better command of the language.

On a more imporatnt note, why, oh why, do we allow incompetent would-be killers, when convicted of attempted murder, to serve relatively short sentences, thus allowing them to become better at their chosen endeavor?

Posted by: Will Allen at May 9, 2005 06:49 PM

Bobby, Will:
All that's required to understand what I was saying is simple use of context. What's the context? Dehumanization. By dehumanizing killers, you engage in the same reduction of others to mere objects and obstacles than many criminal minds do.

Posted by: Jeff S. at May 10, 2005 08:08 AM

So....we are supposed to "humanize" a career criminal who kills a police officer in cold blood, precipitated by urinating in public? You mean I'm supposed to understand the nuances of two career criminals, reacting to a police officer confronting them by pulling out a gun shooting?

Enlighten me. Please.

Posted by: Dave at May 10, 2005 09:26 AM

Its always good to hear that a pig got shot. It brings music to my ears when I hear of the news. The way they treat people bad and act like there bad behind the badge, I'm suprise the killers didn't unload the whole clip on his ass.
I'm not saying all cops are bad, but most cop deserve the bullet. So hell with their family and kids. They done put many fathers away and rip many families apart. I pity their efforts for what they done. Should of never been a pig in the first place and maybe you'll live longer.
Pathetic ass....pigs. Stupid fuckers

Posted by: Joe at May 10, 2005 11:46 AM

Speaking as someone who has a best friend who's a state trooper, as well as several other police officer friends, who are all good and decent, hard-working professionals, I sincerely hope that they get the chance to beat Joe's head in with their asps, and then pepper spray him until he runs out of tears.

Posted by: Ryan at May 10, 2005 12:26 PM

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