By C. Fraser Smith|April 27, 2008
There was something unsettling in the air last Monday at Unity United Methodist Church. It was disturbing for the Rev. Napoleon Rush, not because it was new but because he had seen it before.
A funeral was about to begin. Young men were walking in and out of church and up to the casket to express ... what? Condolences? Good riddance?
He asked them to behave appropriately. He asked them to respect the body that lay at the front of the church and the 300 assembled mourners. They ignored him. As always, he was prepared to speak about the defeating cycle of violence.
Outside, a few moments later, there were gunshots. Two people were wounded, one of them fatally.
An older woman in an elegant white hat stood quietly, her eyes glazed as if she had been dropped into a free-fire zone. The telltale yellow crime scene ribbon kept people back from the wounded. Though not hurt, she, too, was a victim. Where could she go to escape the shooting? Not even to church.
Welcome to Baltimore, where men of God, mourners and even the dead get no respect.
In the city's public schools as well, the atmosphere is rife with threat and danger. Jolita Berry, an art teacher, was beaten by one of her young female students at Reginald F. Lewis High School. A class full of other students stood by and watched. No one intervened. This behavior, too, was not new. Teachers all over the city say they have been threatened and assaulted.
One of the bystanders captured the melee on a cell phone camera. Later, these images went up on the Internet for the wider world to see.
Several weeks earlier, another such scene was on display, a city police officer angrily dealing with a skateboarder who ignored his orders to leave the Inner Harbor. The officer's rough response was widely condemned - and it should have been - but his reaction may be drawing more sympathy now.
While street killings in Baltimore have been surprisingly less frequent than last year, a cloud of violent crime seems to have fallen upon parts of the city once seemingly immune to such outbreaks. Good police work must be credited, but who doubts that more serious underlying causes must be addressed? Gangs are thought to be involved in some of these incidents, but there is also a more generalized flouting of law, community responsibility and concern for life.
