BlogHer - crime - Comments

I really hope there is a serious inquiry

Kim Pearson — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:41:13 -0600

Hello Council-woman elect :-)

The compassion and care with which you write are part of the reason that I am sure that you will do a wonderful job in your new post, Jill.

But to respond to the substance of your points. You are absolutely right, and I dearly hope there will be a serious investigation of whether it's true that the police and the health department ignored pertinent information that might have brought this tragedy to light sooner and saved some lives.

Kim
BlogHer Contributing Editor|KimPearson.net|

I wonder what is brewing under the brooding?

Kim Pearson — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:29:06 -0600

First, thank you, Nordette for your affirmation. It means a great deal coming from someone whose writing and insight I respect greatly. Second, I suspect that something creative is beyond your brooding and frustration, which I share. Third, thanks for the reminder about the Grim Sleeper case.

I think that many of us recognize that there are connections between what happened in Cleveland and what is happening in many other places. Can we create a space for conversations that lead to better understanding, and possible solutions?

Kim
BlogHer Contributing Editor|KimPearson.net|

Thank you for breaking your silence

Kim Pearson — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:06:40 -0600

I think you are dead-on in all that you say, especially here:

There are cycles within the most strained families that virtually guarantee that the same factors that contributed to the troubled member's problems will remain to "infect" future generations. Maybe we need a similar model as the foster care one for families who are taking on the state's roles in caring for and supporting troubled members with drug, criminal, and serious mental health issues. Instead of treatment being individually-based with an accute care model, they should be family (especially extended family)-based and viewed in an on-going, chronic model of care.

You have given us a great deal to ponder - and raised an empowering possibility. What models of community care would we create, had we the power? What programs are out there that can serve as constructive models? And since this online community is a "Do-ocracy, how can we become part of the solution?

Kim
BlogHer Contributing Editor|KimPearson.net|

Families Under Strain

PPR_Scribe — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 08:52:22 -0600

I am going to break my self-imposed silence on "heavy" stories to comment on your wonderful post, Kim. :-)

I want to preface my comments by saying that I am not victim-blaming. Instead, I am trying to provide some context to the question you asked--What does this case say about us?--with a specific focus on the question of how these women could have gone missing and seemingly unnoticed by their family members.

What I think this case says about us is that some families are under a tremendous amount of strain. I have heard in the media and in the blogosphere that some (many?) of these women who were murdered were "throw-away" people and that is why they were such easy victims. Well, there is a pathway that results in people with drug, mental health, and other problems becoming "throw-away." (And I am not saying that every single one of these women had drug, criminal, and/or mental health histories, but this background is coming out about at least some of them.)

Traditionally, families have been the ones to care for troubled members, including drug addicted ones. We as a society only step in to provide such expensive and time-intensive care (or to simply pay attention) when things get really bad--e.g., the person commits a heinous crime or becomes a victim of a heinous crime. Specific to addiction, a lot of times drug problems are seen as "victimless" crimes. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Many times family members are the victims of drug addicted individuals in their clan. They are stolen from, they provide shelter and food (even if such things are tight to begin with), they care for the children that their troubled family member cannot. They are open to real violence from friends, "colleagues," and holders of their family member's debt.

(A scene from a work of fiction always comes to my mind when thinking about this. In SPike Lee's "Jungle Fever," the mother, played by Ruby Dee, is surprised that her new color TV set is missing from her living room. Her drug addicted son, played by Samuel L. Jackson, says "Mama I smoked the colore TV...")

In addition to what the family members must provide and must endure at the hands of their troubled member, is the opportunity cost of that member not being someone who can provide them with social support. You often cannot depend on a gangmember cousin to be on the "call list" at your child's preschool. You often cannot depend on a drug addicted brother to pitch in when Nana needs to be put in a care facility. You often best not count on a severely mentally ill, off-medication aunt to bring the potato salad to the family reunion.

Often the person who suffers and gives up the most because of these troubled family members is a woman: an aunt, a sister, a grandmother, a mother. And frequently this woman is always the one who ends up taking on these burdens and she sometimes may be in this role for multiple family members simultaneously. (The case of the soldier who did not deploy because her family care plan for her child fell apart comes to mind. Apparently her mother had been identified in her plan, but the mother was already taking care of more than one family member.)

Their troubled family members come and go, sometimes being gone for weeks or months at a time before resurfacing. When they are gone the reaction from their family is often not concern--as in, We've got to call the police because he or she is missing. The reaction is often a sigh of relief and a break from the victimization at their family member's hand and just the stress that the member places on their whole life.

It is easy to fault these family members when things go terribly wrong--for example when it turns out their troubled kin has not just gone on a 3-month bender but has been buried in a basement. But we do not have any mechanism in our society to help out families before things get to such a state. We have the idea that we do not "pay" families to help their own; That's just what families do. In fact, even if they were able to get paid or other support for their members, it is not clear that all caretaking family members would take advantage of this support since even they may feel like it is their "job" as family.

In this present case, I think it is good that members are remembering and sharing the good of who their deceased kin were in life. It is important for the rest of us to know these things and to see these women as human beings. Just know that it is often these good memories that keep their family members providing support again and again. It is hard to put brother out of the house for good when you have such good memories of what a wonderful, promising child he was.

I think, then, what this case says about "us" is that we need a new attitude about how we view family. For example, some states are now providing support (funds and services) for family members who are serving as foster parents to related children, where in the past only unrelated foster parents could receive financial and other support. In many of these cases, family members do not even have to go through the often painful process of having their kin's parental rights terminated: instead they are being allowed to serve as permanent guardians.

There are cycles within the most strained families that virtually guarantee that the same factors that contributed to the troubled member's problems will remain to "infect" future generations. Maybe we need a similar model as the foster care one for families who are taking on the state's roles in caring for and supporting troubled members with drug, criminal, and serious mental health issues. Instead of treatment being individually-based with an accute care model, they should be family (especially extended family)-based and viewed in an on-going, chronic model of care.

Otherwise "throw-away" individuals will really become "throw-away" families or even whole communities who we just discount.

This So-Called, Post-Post-Racial Life

http://postpostracial.wordpress.com/

As I listen to Michel's

Nordette — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:46:12 -0600

As I listen to Michel's report, I recall the Grim Sleeper case, which I think remains unsolved. The victims are mostly minority, poor, and some are prostitutes, and the case only recently (March 2009) received some of the attention it deserved.

I'm fairly sick of seeing people blame female victims for their beatings and even murders.

Again, this post is excellent. I'm still thinking about it. Hence my return, and I'm not saying much, which is usually a sign that I'm brooding over the whole situation, mostly how people are complaining about the coverage.

Nordette Adams is a BlogHer CE & you can find her other stuff through Her 411.

And that leads to derelection of duty

Jill Miller Zimon — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:11:10 -0600

I'm angry at how, when that thinking gets accepted, esp. by our law enforcement folks, as well as whomever else might have had a chance to pursue stopping Sowell, other excuses get used to mask the discomfort people feel about helping people who indeed might not have been helping themselves. But their not helping themselves should NEVER be an excuse for us to not act - prosecutors say all the time that they don't get to choose their victims (meaning, sometimes they will have unsavory victims, but that doesn't make the actions of the defendants any less criminal).

I think that's part of what makes me so upset - how willing others are to say why they didn't do something, rather than say we failed. I wish I could remember the case, but there was a case within the last calendar year where the authorities stood right out there in front of the media and everyone and said, we missed this, we missed this. It doesn't bring anyone back anymore than the denial of responsibility, but at least it's some indication of sincerity in hopefully making positive changes.

Jill Writes Like She Talks

Thank you for sharing this

pamlyn — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:03:30 -0600

Kim, thank you for your excellent post and thanks, Jill for sharing this on Facebook.

This story reminds me so much how the Heidnik murders in Philadelphia. In the late '80s, Gary Heidnik kidnapped, tortured and, in some cases, murdered six women in his Philadelphia row home. I asked myself then, and now again, how these things occur. Sadly, I have come to the conclusion that, with all that is good about our society, there still exists a belief that there are throw-away people. The majority of our society looks upon the drug addicts, the indigent, the prostitutes, the homeless and, in some cases, the mentally ill as people who based on their actions are a drain on society.

Rather than looking at these individuals and saying, "there but for the grace of God go I", the prevailing attitude is that these individuals brought there misfortune upon themselves and therefore deserve the consequences of their actions. It makes you wonder who the real monsters are, the perpetrators of these crimes or we, who stood by an let their victims slip through the cracks.

Pamela Lyn

Outstanding post

Jill Miller Zimon — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 16:22:45 -0600

Kim, I'm so sorry that the case of Sowell and the women who he killed has had less coverage in the Cleveland and Ohio blogs - almost none from what I've seen. I've actually been thrilled that the Plain Dealer has been sticking with its constant and relatively thorough coverage - including a front page article on it today.

I have not blogged about it and have no better excuse than the reality that I'm barely at three or four blog posts a week since the election, if that. I'm going to post about your story and also will tweet it, link to it from Facebook etc. You just do a wonderful job of pulling the emotions together.

I don't know if this will make sense or not, but as I was finishing reading your post, what actually came to my mind as being somewhat similar in nature has been the attitude that I feel came out this week about the new breast cancer screening guidelines - just this authority-based proclamation that we're supposed to accept without question or risk being intimidated out of asking anything beyond even one question regarding how they could make the recommendations they're making. That is NOT to be construed as saying that I completely disbelieve them or anything like that.

But this dissing of us - Zach Reed, Connie Schultz, the survivors, anyone - pressing whomever is in a position of authority to explain themselves and then being looked at as though we have three heads for even questioning their decisions.

That the victims involve women, that the women were all WOC, that it happened in a city with the urban problems Cleveland has (low unemployment, poverty, declining population) make it seem all too easy for those in positions of authority to sweep the cases under the rug and make cliche-driven excuses for why they failed these women, families and neighborhoods (and no matter the reasons, it is a failure of some proportion - intentional or accidental - when 11 women disappear and aren't found until another possible victim gets away).

Anyway - thank you for writing about it.

Jill Writes Like She Talks

Thank you, Kim. Well said ...

Nordette — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 13:53:11 -0600

I'm glad that a public record is emerging about the people these women were, because for the past two weeks, they have been objects -- objects of pity, curiosity, horror and debate. Some of that is inevitable, given the horrific circumstances of their murders. But some of it reflects upon our understanding or ignorance of the struggles that families endure when someone they love has fallen prey to addiction. And yes, there is the fact that these women were black and poor.

Well said.

Nordette Adams is a BlogHer CE & you can find her other stuff through Her 411.

Interesting. MSM was saying

Nordette — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:16:23 -0600

Interesting. MSM was saying he was a goner. Just got back and see the update on CNN.

Thanks, Erin.

Nordette Adams is a BlogHer CE & you can find her other stuff through Her 411.

News conference has authorities saying shooter NOT dead

Erin Kotecki Vest — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:26:41 -0600

He's in custody and in stable condition at a local hospital.

Politics & News Contributing Editor Queen of Spain

Thank you, Liz

Nordette — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:22:01 -0600

I like practical information like this that helps people take action when most of us feel helpless.

Nordette Adams is a BlogHer CE & you can find her other stuff through Her 411.

Blood Donors needed at Ft. Hood area hospitals

Liz Henry — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:12:55 -0600

http://www.sw.org/web/patientsAndVisitors
Urgent Need for Blood Donations

Due to the recent events on Fort Hood, we are in URGENT need of ALL blood types.

Please come to Scott & White Blood Donor Center and donate blood as soon as possible, we are located in Room 115 next the McLane Dining Room in the main hospital. We are open today until at least 7 p.m. and you can contact us at 254-724-4376 if you need any assistance on determining your eligibility to donate.

Scott & White • 2401 S. 31st St. • Temple, TX 76508
• 254-724-2111 • 800-792-3710 • 254-724-3038 (TTY)

-----------------
Liz Henry
Composite: Tech & Poetics
lizzard@bookmaniac.net

shocking but typical

j.c. — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 14:12:31 -0500

isn't this happening all the time? wasn't the older African American gentleman who was kicked off of an amtrak train in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere treated the same way. it was later found that it was a diabetic condition that lead to his erratic behavior. this story is so sad on many levels. this is a police agency that is not too busy, understaffed or has a million calls coming in. you would expect that on a human level they would have sought to protect a young woman in the middle of the night. my prayers go out to her family.

www.smilelaughordie.com

If I Take Your Meaning Correctly

Megan Smith — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:10:25 -0500

Yeah, he shouldn't have been sleeping around with women who worked for him in the first place, but once he had to testify in front of a grand jury, the info would have gotten out anyway.

Better that he did it the way he did than let it dribble out from other sources.

But I love your rock by the river imagery.

Megan
BlogHer Contributing Editor, TV/Online Video

My Personal Entertainment Blog: Megan's Minute

Twitter:@MeganSmith