Stories from the heart

I read this this morning and my heart aches for those who have been lost to gun violence. There are many kinds, homicide, suicide and of course mass shootings. They all share the same fact – death by a gun – but the way they were killed and how they were killed, differ.

These are some from the Washington Post that are about 9 individuals killed by a gun. I have little more to add but to ask that you read these stories and make no judgements other than the fact they are American and almost all of them are of color they are also largely people who were working class, they were not Gangsters or involved in the act of a crime nor even doing anything that would make you go, “Hmm well that is what you get going out to, coming home at…” Guns did this and the people who had the guns got them easily and had no problem using them to kill. We always need a motive, how about “Hey I got a gun let me go shoot some shit. I got to make it right” Who they kill why they kill is secondary to the fact that they had a gun and they used it to shoot to kill a fellow human. What more motive do you need? All gun crimes are hate crimes.

These are nine stories from America’s homicide crisis.

Jaylon was on his front porch.

Jody was at the park.

Juanita was sitting in her car.

Violence found them all

By Washington Post Staff

Nov. 27, 2022

Fowler reported from Jackson, Miss.; Gilsinan reported from St. Louis; Cusick reported from New Orleans; Freedman reported from Memphis; Bailey reported from Baton Rouge; Connors reported from Cleveland; and Rosenzweig-Ziff reported from Washington, D.C.

Topper photos by Kathleen Flynn, Dustin Franz, Maddie McGarvey and Joe Martinez.

Photo editing by Natalia Jimenez. Copy editing by Dorine Bethea. Story editing by Amanda Erickson. Design and development by Stephanie Hays. Data analysis by John D. Harden. Design editing by Madison Walls.

During the last three years, homicides nationwide have reached their highest levels in decades.

The deadly spike coincided with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic: The rate of killings rose nearly 30 percent in 2020 and remained high through the following year, according to a Washington Post database created to track the toll. Even now, as the bloodshed has slowed, the homicide rate outpaces pre-pandemic levels.

This gun violence tends to grab headlines when it occurs in horrific public spasms: at a Walmart in Virginia, a nightclub in Colorado, an elementary school in rural Texas. But the focus on mass shootings obscures the totality of the American ailment: people killed on city streets and inside their homes, deaths that seldom attract national attention and cases that rarely involve high-profile prosecutions. In many, an arrest has yet to be made.

The slayings have left a trail of grieving families, neighborhoods in mourning and an untold number of people dealing with the trauma of sudden, brutal loss. And the toll is not equally borne.

Gun crime disproportionately impacts people of color, especially Black men. Victim data collected from each city profiled here show Black people made up more than 80 percent of the total homicide victims in 2020 and 2021. And while data show gun deaths have surged around the country, a number of cities lead the way.

The Post visited nine of these places, which have seen some of the nation’s highest recent murder rates. They are spread mostly across the South and Midwest. Some have long been in the spotlight for their homicide numbers, others have not.

In each place, monuments have sprung up to commemorate those lost, some informal and fleeting, others lasting — some public, some private. They mark a death, but just as important, they remind everyone who sees them of the lives lived: the aspiring aerospace engineer, the retired chef who cooked for the hungry, the teen so funny he was granted five minutes at the end of class to joke around, the 4-year-old who laid flowers on her dad’s grave last Father’s Day.

Cleveland

Lawrence Morgan, 17

‘He was my person.’

Bethany Rohrer, left, and a friend of her late son Lawrence Morgan comfort Allison Radulov during a vigil held in memory of Lawrence in Parma, Ohio.

A couple of years before he was killed, 17-year-old Lawrence Morgan posted a sign on his bedroom door: “Guns Forbidden.

“He was always talking about how he hated how people carried guns,” said Joey Kline, Lawrence’s best friend since fourth grade. “He was just so against guns.”

He had other passions too. His mother Bethany Rohrer said her son loved basketball and making people laugh. He was goofy and endearing — one of his teachers even offered him five minutes at the end of every class to joke around, as long as he cut it out during lessons.

“Every memory I have of him is of us laughing and smiling,” Kline said.Lawrence’s uncle Bob Schnable puts together a picture board before a celebration of life ceremony.

Friends were always popping over to Lawrence’s house in Parma, a Cleveland suburb; his mother wanted it that way. The boys would sometimes wander to a nearby park or drive around the neighborhood. That is what they were doing the afternoon of June 21, when someone started firing.

At least 170 people were killed in Cleveland in 2021

Lawrence was shot seven times in the chest and died on the scene. Police later arrested Gunnar Glaszewski, 16, and charged him with murder and felonious assault. Gunnar and Lawrence lived a couple of blocks from each other and went to the same high school. “There was a six-month period where Gunnar was at our house every day,” Rohrer said. “Then they had a falling out, and they weren’t friends anymore.”

The day after Lawrence was killed, two of his friends created a memorial at the corner where he was shot. They wrapped a telephone pole in strips of crepe paper — red and purple, his favorite colors — and attached star-shaped balloons. At the base, they pinned a large piece of poster board with #LLL — Long Live Law.

That evening, they held a vigil. A small crowd of friends and family lit candles; Beyonce’s “Heaven” played in the background.

“He was my person, really the only person I could ever talk to,” said a sobbing Allison Radulov, a friend from middle school. “He’s just a genuine person, never out to hurt anyone.”

“Lawrence was such a good kid,” said Tashondra Forster. “He tried to direct my son on the right path. He was just a positive role model for him.”

St. Louis

Damion Baker, 25

He helped a woman to her car. Then the shooting started.

Family members of Damion Baker mourn near his casket during the memorial and celebration of life services at Lighthouse Baptist Church

Damion Baker was in elementary school when he picked up the phrase he’d use for the rest of his life: “Well, technically …”

It tickled his mom An’namarie Baker to hear her son carefully explain some finer point. The expression captured Baker’s essence, she said. He was witty and diligent, a leader in school and a Division I college football player who went on to run his own construction business.

262 people were killed in St. Louis in 2020

Baker was “cooler than a Cadillac with AC in hundred-degree weather,” his friend Kevin Spraggins Jr. said at his funeral. He had great taste in sweatshirts, An’namarie said, and gave “the best hugs,” according to his aunt Carlotta Baker.

That kindness was on full display on July 3 when Baker escorted a woman to her car in downtown St. Louis. The pair were shot in an attempted carjacking. She survived; Baker died at the age of 25. The case remains unsolved.

At a service in Baker’s honor, images flashed across the auditorium screen ahead of the ceremony. In one photo, Baker is a skinny kid with big ears. In another, he is a grinning teenager in a #17 jersey at Christian Brothers College High School. In one video clip, he is teaching his beloved niece De’Sanyi, now 5, how to brush her teeth. (“Don’t eat” the toothpaste, he advises her on the video.)

Baker dreamed of playing for the NFL, making enough money so his mother would not have to work. But when he realized that was not going to happen, he adjusted. “One thing D-Bake told me was, ‘if we’re stand-up men, that’s all our mama want,’ ” his cousin Abryon Givens said at the service.

Baker’s older brother Devon said their mother called the two of them her “Double Ds.” At an early age, they had decided that meant “dedication and determination.” The boys saw things through to the end, An’namarie said, “whether they liked it or not.”

An’namarie is focused now on ending the gun violence that has taken so many other children from their mothers. “Damion cannot just be some random number of homicide, and we move on to the next number,” she said. “It’s gotta look different.”

Columbus, Ohio

Glenn Clark III, 50

‘He was a proud daddy.’

The family of Glenn Clark III gather in Grove City, Ohio, to commemorate his death.

As a high-schooler in the late 1980s, Glenn Clark III would get out of the shower and head straight outside. The only way to get his hair just right was to speed down the road past his family’s farm on his motorcycle, his family said.

He soon found joy working with his hands while tilling the sod fields at his home outside Columbus, Ohio. That passion led to a career as a mechanic working in factories in Ohio and Kentucky, where he moved with his then-wife, Deana Burke, and his two children.

“He was a proud daddy and a simple guy,” said Desere Adams, 54, his older sister. “He wore T-shirts with holes in them and loved riding his motorcycle. If I needed him, if they needed him, he was there.”After Clark was killed, his parents named their cat Happy, Clark’s nickname.

After he and Burke divorced 20 years ago, he moved back to work in Grove City, Ohio, to live with his parents.

Then, almost seven years ago, he met Rochelle Rice, now 53. On their first date, they spent five hours talking about Vikings — Clark knew everything about the Scandinavian seafarers’ history — and laughing. Two months later, they bought a house near Columbus.

In August, Clark received a promotion. That night, he went to a bar with members of his motorcycle club, the Avengers, to toast his new job. At the bar, a fight broke out. Five people were shot, and at least one bullet hit and killed Clark, one of two Avengers who died.

At least 100 people have been killed so far in Columbus in 2022

Nearly three months later, the police investigation is ongoing.

On what would have been his 51st birthday last month, Adams, Rice and the rest of the family gathered at Clark’s parents’ home to celebrate his life. They all wore their new urn jewelry — necklaces with his photo or Viking symbols and a small place for his ashes — and Adams, Rice and Shadow, now 28, showed the tattoos they had gotten to memorialize Clark.

“He was bigger than Everest in my mind,” Shadow said. “He was my hero.”

New Orleans

Shane Brown, 20

‘He was my little brilliant mind.’

Shane Brown, 20, was murdered in March. His body was found in a canal near this intersection in New Orleans East.

At St. Anna’s Episcopal Church in the Treme neighborhood, the Rev. Bill Terry and his team have maintained a somber project. On large boards hung across the church’s facade, they handwrite particulars about each New Orleanian killed by violence. Date. Name. Age. Method.

Among this year’s names: Shane Brown. 20. Shot.

“He was my little brilliant mind,” his mother, Gloria Brown, 56, said.

At least 205 people were killed in the first eight months of 2022 in New Orleans

Nicknamed “the brain” by his family, Shane Brown was an avid reader and honor roll student who enjoyed programming and robotics. He was also socially aware, said E’jaaz Mason, 31, Brown’s digital media teacher at New Orleans Charter Science and Mathematics High School.

“You can tell he internalized a lot of what is going on in this country when it comes to Black boys,” Mason said. “He cared about the state of his people, and I always really respected that about him.”

Gloria Brown holds her phone showing a photo she made of an “S” she saw in the clouds recently. She said since he passed she has seen the shape in the clouds or in water and can feel his presence. Handwritten names, ages and method of death of New Orleanians killed are kept on a memorial on the facade of St. Anna’s Episcopal Church in the Treme neighborhood, including Brown, who was fatally shot. The program from Shane Brown’s funeral sits next to the Louisiana Film Prize he received for his 11-minute short, “Like a Ship Without a Sail,” when he was in high school. Brown, 20, was an avid reader and honor roll student.

As a junior, Brown approached Mason with an idea: He wanted to make a film about what Black boys experience in New Orleans.

“Kids used to come to me 10 times a day talking about wanting to make a movie,” Mason said. “But literally the very next day, Shane came with a double-sided sheet of loose-leaf paper, with a skeletal structure of a story.”

The two assembled a small team to bring Brown’s vision to life. The resulting 11-minute short, “Like a Ship Without a Sail,” swept the student awards at the Louisiana Film Prize the following spring.Gloria Brown sits at her kitchen table in Slidell.

A year later, as the covid-19 pandemic ravaged New Orleans, Brown graduated in a drive-through ceremony held at a local park. He turned down offers at engineering programs across the country to instead begin his undergraduate education at a local community college. Brown hoped to someday transfer to one of his dream schools, like Massachusetts Institute of Technology or Georgia Tech, with the ultimate goal of becoming an aerospace engineer.

By 2022, Brown was balancing his courses with a job at the port and getting around in his first car. Then this March, less than two weeks after his 20th birthday, Brown did not come home from work one day.

Five grueling days would pass before Brown’s body was discovered floating in a New Orleans East canal. Coroners later determined he died of a gunshot wound to the head.

Police made an arrest in the case, but Brown’s loved ones said they still do not know why he was killed. Gloria Brown instead tries to focus on appreciating the 20 years she had with her only child. “He was the person that I had asked for when I became a late mom,” she said.

Mason said Brown’s death signifies a loss of potential.

“You never know what that person would have done to improve and perfect our world,” he said. “And now we’ll never know.”

Memphis

Juanita Washington, 60

Juanita Washington’s photo sits outside the dance studio she loved.

“I just want to feel her presence,” said Ladia Yates, 32, owner of the Memphis dance studio where Washington worked as an administrator. “I don’t want anyone to forget her.”

Washington, 60, was fatally shot around lunchtime on Dec. 29, 2021, while sitting in her car in a Walgreens parking lot. A suspect was arrested in Las Vegas in March.

Homicides hit a record high in 2020 — and 2021 in Memphis

Yates had known Washington for nearly two decades. She and Yates’s grandmother Yvonne Paschal, who also works at the dance studio, had become particularly close.

“She was like our sergeant-at-arms,” said Paschal, 77. It was Washington who made sure everyone paid admission at events. She was loving but firm with the kids, and known for her honesty. “She was very open — you didn’t have to guess where she was coming from,” Paschal said.

“I just really didn’t have a friend like I had with Juanita,” she added. “I don’t have anyone that I can talk to and share things like she and I did.”

Washington was considered family by many employees of the studio where she worked for years before she was shot and killed. Yates, center, with some of her youth dancers, pose for a photo while wearing hoodies honoring the memory of Washington. Yates poses with some of her dancers around a memorial honoring Washington.

Washington’s spot at the front desk, beside Paschal, remains off limits. Yates held a candlelight vigil there in the days after the shooting, and has dedicated performances in Washington’s memory, tributes her studio has carried into performances this year.

The first of those came the day of Washington’s funeral — but took place 1,800 miles away in Los Angeles. Yates had committed to a competition there and did not want to back out. The specially choreographed opener, a swirling portrait of fury and grace set to gospel star Kirk Franklin’s “Don’t Cry,” was devoted to Washington.

Earlier that day in a Facebook post, Yates had written: “These folks don’t understand the beast that’s about to come out of me on this dance floor.”

Birmingham, Ala.

Jaylon Palmore, 13

He told his family he was going to be famous.

Kim Woody-Walker, the mother of Jaylon Palmore, stands next to the overgrown garden she and her son kept together. Since Jaylon was killed by a stray bullet on March 5, Woody-Walker has not been able to bring herself to clear and replant the garden.pper

The quiet 13-year-old stood before his parents in their east Birmingham home and made a bold declaration: “Y’all just watch, I’m gonna be famous.A keepsake card from the funeral of Jaylon, who was killed at his home in east Birmingham by a stray bullet on March 5. Jaylon was an avid gamer and hoped to go pro when he became an adult.

It was the kind of thing kids always say, and Jaylon Palmore had said it before. Like the time he told his mother, Kim Woody-Walker, and her husband, Gregory Walker, that he would be a star football player. “You’re going to have to beef up, son,” they replied, smiling at the lanky teen.

But Jaylon’s real passion was gaming. So when he said it again, and told his parents to remember his gamertag — “You’ll be looking for Jaypop27!”— they were inclined to believe him.

After all, they watched the way he set his mind to something and followed through, like when his grades began to slip and they told him he’d lose the PlayStation if he did not shape up. The report cards that followed made his parents proud.

At least 100 people have been killed since the start of 2022 in Birmingham

Jaylon’s stepdad liked to rib him about all the time he spent in his room, controller in hand, headset on: “Don’t you have a girl you can speak to?” Walker would ask, joking with the son he had helped raise for a decade. But really, his parents did not mind the hobby. He was soft-spoken and introverted, and gaming kept him inside, safe and out of trouble.

“My baby said he was going to be famous,” Woody-Walker said. “But I did not know and I did not want it to be this way.”

On the afternoon of March 5, Jaylon was on the porch with some of his older sister’s friends when two cars drove past the house, and gunmen opened fire. The first bullet hit Jaylon in the back and tore through his internal organs. Another hit an older man in the arm; he would survive, but Jaylon did not. In September, more than six months after the shooting, police arrested a suspect in the case. They believe someone else on the porch that day was the intended target.

Jaylon was killed just weeks before his 14th birthday, just months before the end of eighth grade. At school, his teachers and classmates painted a banner with his name in bright blue script and released a raft of balloons in his honor. The sign at the building’s entrance read “We love you Jaylon.” At graduation, the school held a seat open in his honor, adorned with his photo and a rose.

Woody-Walker is waiting to set up her own space to celebrate Jaylon. The couple decided to sell their house, which was full of reminders of their son.

The family did not take many pictures, but they have a reel of memories: Jaylon stroking his mother’s face and asking, “Momma, why you so soft?”; and the time his dad took him fishing, and Jaylon showed him up, catching bream after bream.

The sound of Jaylon’s music, oldies like Frankie Beverly and Maze and Earth, Wind and Fire. And his eclectic sense of style, an outfit never complete without a colorful pair of sneakers.

On May 27, Woody-Walker visited her son’s grave with a big Happy Birthday sign. She cleaned up around the site, sat down and talked to him. She told him she loved him, she’d never forget him and that she would see him again one day.

“Just rest, baby,” she said. “Just rest.”

Baton Rouge

Leslie Joseph Riley Jr., 66

He said he would die under the tree he loved. He was killed there.

From left, Larry Mack, Mike Walker and Charles Russell hang out at a lot that has been a gathering place for longtime friends in the neighborhood in Baton Rouge. Their friend Leslie Joseph “Jody” Riley Jr. was killed there in the afternoon of July 24th.

His name was Leslie Joseph Riley Jr. But almost everyone knew him as “Jody,” a gregarious man with a teasing smile who could often be found lingering in the shade of the towering oak trees at the corner of Tennessee and East Polk streets in South Baton Rouge.Riley is pictured in a family photo with his grandchildren Jaden Brown, right, Kyson Brown, bottom left, and Kensley Brown of Durham North Carolina.

A small vacant lot, it had for decades been an unofficial park for the locals. There were chairs and a grill, which Riley, a retired chef, often used to cook meals for neighbors who could not afford anything to eat. At 66, he had spent his life in the shadow of those trees, growing from a boy into an old man — recently joking with his family that he’d probably spend his last hours on earth in that very spot.

No one ever imagined that would be true. But on July 24, just after 3 p.m., a crackle of gunfire interrupted a sunny Sunday afternoon. Someone in a passing car had opened fire, spraying a volley of bullets toward the trees. Riley, who is not believed to have been the target, died at the scene. A second man, 20, was also shot but survived.

Gunfire has been the soundtrack of a violent stretch here in a neighborhood known as the Bottom — a nickname tied to its hilly terrain but which to some has also come to define the decline of what used to be the vibrant center of the Black community. Riley had been there through it all here, choosing to stay and raise a family even as businesses shuttered and homes fell into disrepair.

LEFT: A memorial plant was planted near where Riley was killed. RIGHT: Leslie Brown, second from right, and his daughters Jasmin Brown, left, Tonniesha Johnson, and Jada Brown, right, pose for a portrait in Leslie’s neighborhood in Baton Rouge.

Riley dreamed of becoming a chef and got his culinary arts degree. For years, he worked at Louisiana State University, cooking at a fraternity house and then at the student union. But at night, he returned to the Bottom to cook for his family, friends and neighbors.

149 people killed in Baton Rouge in 2021, nearly double the number killed in 2019

“He was always passionate about cooking, and that’s how he gave back to the community that he loved,” said Jasmin Brown, Riley’s granddaughter. “He cooked under that tree, all the time. For people he knew, for total strangers. That’s who he was. A man with a heart of gold.”

Riley was angry to see the neighborhood falling into decline, even as other areas of Baton Rouge were being revitalized. His oldest son, also named Leslie, had recently started a nonprofit aimed at drawing city resources and jobs into the community. Riley had recently played in a charity baseball game to raise money for the group. Now, a photo of him from that game is pasted to one of those towering oaks so central to his life.

In the days after the shooting, the spot sat eerily empty. Police have made no arrests. Nearby a sign waved from one of the trees: “Long live Jody,” it read.

Jackson, Miss.

Mariyah Lacy, 4

She buried her dad. Then the violence came for her.

Treasha Lacy, 55, holds a tribute blanket alongside photos memorializing her deceased son and granddaughter at her home in Carrollton, Miss.

Mariyah Lacy slips in and out of the video frame. The 4-year-old is in a pink tank top and ponytail, blue balloons around her. As the camera shifts toward the ground, Mariyah’s tiny gold sandals fill the screen. She lays flowers on her father’s grave.

The clip is from Father’s Day 2021. Mariyah had told her aunt she wanted to “go see Daddy.”Memorial signs remain outside the home of Treasha Lacy in honor of her deceased son and granddaughter.

A year later, her family would bury Mariyah beside him, both victims of Mississippi’s gun violence epidemic. Mariyah was shot sitting in the back of her mother’s truck on June 12. Her mother’s ex-boyfriend has been charged in the killing.

Jackson had the highest homicide rate per capita in 2021, with 153 killings

The family’s “ball of sunshine,” Mariyah was always telling jokes. She loved to be around people and gave everyone she encountered a hug. She liked to stay up late and watch cartoons; Treasha Lacy, her grandmother, would often make a pallet on the floor for Mariyah and her older sister to spend the night. She loved Ramen noodles and seafood; when her father Cornelius Lacy was alive, he would feed her crab legs.

Treasha wanted to honor her granddaughter’s “princess” spirit at her funeral. Mariyah’s casket was covered in images of mermaids, unicorns and butterflies. The toddler was buried in a blue-and-pink fluffy dress; Treasha knew she would have liked it.

Treasha doesn’t like to think about the moments after Mariyah was shot. Was she in pain? Barely 4 feet tall, Treasha’s afraid she knows the answer. “I try not to think she suffered but I’m pretty sure she did,” she said.

Treasha has suffered too. There are days when she is angry. Days when the house is quiet, and it is all just too much to bear. In those moments, she swears she can hear Mariyah running through the house, pulling on her pants leg, saying, “Nana, Nana, Nana.”

Family photos line every wall in Treasha’s home; Mariyah’s face is in half a dozen. A wall in the living room is dedicated to pictures of Cornelius. After Mariyah’s death, Treasha added three more photos of Mariyah, now hung underneath a portrait of her father.

They had the same eyes. Walking down the hall from her bedroom, Cornelius’s photos would greet Treasha each morning. She used to say “Good morning, Cornelius” aloud. Now she silently says good morning to them both.

“What helps me out so much is I know Mariyah is an angel watching over us,” she said. “She’s an angel, and she’s with her dad in his arms.”

Baltimore

Jesika Tetlow, 18

She always wanted to help.

Susannah Ford gathers with friends and family two months after her daughter Jesika Tetlow’s death.

She stood up for her intellectually disabled older sister, classmates who were bullied and any animal she could find. She convinced her family to rescue five stray kittens during two hurricanes. While walking into a Walmart with her mom near her home outside Baltimore, Jesika Tetlow, then 8, called the police because she saw a dog left by itself in a shopper’s car.

“She had this big huge heart for people and for animals,” said Susannah Tetlow, her mother. “She made people feel special and made them each feel like her best friend.”

In Baltimore, at least 200 people have been killed so far in 2022

In middle school, her friend who was having suicidal thoughts had been in the bathroom for longer than usual, so Tetlow volunteered to go look for her.

She found her friend trying to drown herself in the toilet of the school bathroom. Tetlow called 911 and helped save her friend, but the incident made going into school too painful. So Tetlow was home-schooled instead, her family said.

Ford pets one of the cats that her daughter Jesika Tetlow rescued. She had gathered with friends and family to memorialize Tetlow two months after her death. Ford and her son Josh Tetlow decorate a poster with pictures of Jesika. Tetlow was murdered inside a friend’s home during a home invasion.

But when the pandemic hit, forcing classes online, Tetlow thrived, her mother said. She developed an interest in medicine and decided she would either be a veterinarian or a doctor — or maybe both.

On Aug. 30, Tetlow, now 18, went to her friend’s house to take her online classes — she had continued to take classes online even when in-person learning resumed. That night, five masked people dressed in black raided the house. At least one of them had a gun, and shot Tetlow twice through the head and killed her.

Tetlow’s family found out the next morning. “My brain and my heart just shattered,” Susannah Tetlow said of the moment she found out.Tetlow was killed in a home on this block in Baltimore.

The police investigation is ongoing as the family figures out how to memorialize their daughter. A photo of Tetlow and her sister dressed up for homecoming has taken on a new meaning. Tetlow hated being alone and in the dark, so they all got necklaces with space for her ashes so she will always be with them. The family is also wearing turquoise bracelets that say, “Justice for Jesika,” and is hoping to start a foundation in her name.

Susannah Tetlow has also started attending a Thursday night meeting of grieving families at Roberta’s House in Baltimore. “It’s the kind of camaraderie you would not wish on your worst enemy,” Tetlow said of the group, which includes others who have also lost children.

But still, she has struggled to make sense of what happened.

“This is not normal. This is not normal for a city and a country to have so many shootings every day,” Susannah Tetlow said. “This is a human. This is my child. And now she’s gone.”

Chock Full O’Nuts

There are groupies in almost every occupation. None more so than the one associated with the Criminal Justice system. I could think of several authors who would fall into that category and it turned out all right for them writing – fiction.

Now you can have realistic fiction based on non fiction or historical events or people. Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter comes to mind. I enjoyed it. Unlike the other Lincoln “quasi biographic” film of the same name, I ate popcorn watching that one. I find it distasteful to snack on a nacho or M&M while Lincoln was freeing the slaves and getting shot in the head, slaying vampires however.

So today when I read Radley Balko’s blog for the Washington Post I literally laughed my ass off and had a bagel. Oddly that is another movie snack I enjoy with a latte. Seriously people some of the shit you eat in the movies is distressing.

Today he outs a junk scientist only he was never one to begin with. Frankly again the real issue is the media and their lack of substantiating or validating one’s credentials before slapping them up on the big screen to blather on about their expertise.

Mr. Balko had already done one about a ReMax realtor and his “expertise” on mass shootings in schools and there are many other experts with credentials that Mr. Balko has questioned with regards to their knowledge and skill set when it comes to criminal trials and testimony.

The reliance on experts is such a credo by Lawyers that they don’t care who they get to add to the list just as long as they are available, have something published in which to cite and a long history of blathering on to juries about their knowledge and skill set about something that they only read about in a paper or reviewing some depositions. Fair and balanced? Not to any side of the argument. They are just bought and paid for hookers with some “credential” of some kind.

Just like video that can be altered or somehow edited to reflect whosever story needs selling. Mr. Balko also discusses the video that Chris Hayes dissected on his show last night. I never watch MSNBC and during my channel surfing this happened to be on at that moment. Interesting version of “facts” about Tamir Rice, the young 12 year old boy murdered in Cleveland by Police. Shame that the junk scientist forensic pathologist will not be able to do that autopsy. I am sure he is available and probably cheap.

And we have more on regards to the criminal front, the fact of memory and how it too can be deceiving – by intent or by just being human. Great editorial in today’s New York Times about the way memory is not what it appears to be. Total Recall is just a movie and stars Arnold Schwarzenegger. Right there memory issues are either a pun or oxymoron when it comes him.

Then we have the media itself. Yes pointedly blamed by the Prosecutor in Ferguson for contributing to the fraudulent information and testimony to the Grand Jury.. there were apparently some star fuckers there not named by Bill Cosby as liars… but the kind that glom onto the need for attention seeking and validation that the media provides in our 24 hour cycle of dumping, clumping and boring us to death.

Journalism still does have a place. But it takes time to research investigate and substantiate a story, the veracity of the tellers and in turn ensure all sides are accounted for and heard.

The newest in the line of the moon landing was fake, 9-11 was planned by the Jews or other tales of the fabulist which has now been added to the list is the Rolling Stone article about the rape at the University of Virginia. Once again the Tawana Brawley and Duke Lacrosse rape allegations were brought up. Next up more Cosby!

Yes I understand that women have lied about rape. That reporters also lie. But here is the deal assholes – go out and investigate your theory and get back to us with your version. It is easy to be an armchair critic, psychologist or journalist aka blogger but if you really suspect a story and its veracity then either put up or shut up. The idea that you are sure you know the truth and then a bunch of other people who you don’t know either nor their authenticity to comment does not make it the truth, it makes it what it is – ranting and raving. Read the comments section of any newspaper it is full of vitriol and idiocy that has one questioning the sanity of Americans. Another Washington Post article discusses that very issue – here.

People Lie. They lie by omission, the lie by intent, they lie out of fear and they lie as their memories fail them. We have no such thing as a lie detector but in today’s age of information it is easy to substantiate, correct or simply ignore the lies and the liars who tell them.

Why Our Memory Fails Us
By CHRISTOPHER F. CHABRIS and DANIEL J. SIMONS
DEC. 1, 2014

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON, the astrophysicist and host of the TV series “Cosmos,” regularly speaks to audiences on topics ranging from cosmology to climate change to the appalling state of science literacy in America. One of his staple stories hinges on a line from President George W. Bush’s speech to Congress after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In a 2008 talk, for example, Dr. Tyson said that in order “to distinguish we from they” — meaning to divide Judeo-Christian Americans from fundamentalist Muslims — Mr. Bush uttered the words “Our God is the God who named the stars.”

Dr. Tyson implied that President Bush was prejudiced against Islam in order to make a broader point about scientific awareness: Two-thirds of the named stars actually have Arabic names, given to them at a time when Muslims led the world in astronomy — and Mr. Bush might not have said what he did if he had known this fact.

This is a powerful example of how our biases can blind us. But not in the way Dr. Tyson thought. Mr. Bush wasn’t blinded by religious bigotry. Instead, Dr. Tyson was fooled by his faith in the accuracy of his own memory.

In his post-9/11 speech, Mr. Bush actually said, “The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends,” and he said nothing about the stars. Mr. Bush had indeed once said something like what Dr. Tyson remembered; in 2003 Mr. Bush said, in tribute to the astronauts lost in the Columbia space shuttle explosion, that “the same creator who names the stars also knows the names of the seven souls we mourn today.” Critics pointed these facts out; some accused Dr. Tyson of lying and argued that the episode should call into question his reliability as a scientist and a public advocate.
When he was first asked for the source of Mr. Bush’s quotation, Dr. Tyson insisted, “I have explicit memory of those words being spoken by the president. I reacted on the spot, making note for possible later reference in my public discourse. Odd that nobody seems to be able to find the quote anywhere.” He then added, “One of our mantras in science is that the absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence.”

That is how we all usually respond when our memory is challenged. We have an abstract understanding that people can remember the same event differently. The film “Rashomon” made this point more than 60 years ago, the Showtime series “The Affair” presents each episode from two conflicting viewpoints, and contradictory witness testimony is a crime drama trope. But when our own memories are challenged, we may neglect all this and instead respond emotionally, acting as though we must be right and everyone else must be wrong.

Overconfidence in memory could emerge from our daily experience: We recall events easily and often, at least if they are important to us, but only rarely do we find our memories contradicted by evidence, much less take the initiative to check if they are right. We then rely on confidence as a signal of accuracy — in ourselves and in others. It’s no accident that Oprah Winfrey’s latest best seller is called “What I Know For Sure,” rather than “Some Things That Might Be True.”

Our lack of appreciation for the fallibility of our own memories can lead to much bigger problems than a misattributed quote. Memory failures that resemble Dr. Tyson’s mash-up of distinct experiences have led to false convictions, and even death sentences. Whose memories we believe and whose we disbelieve influence how we interpret controversial public events, as demonstrated most recently by the events in Ferguson, Mo.

Erroneous witness recollections have become so concerning that the National Academy of Sciences convened an expert panel to review the state of research on the topic. This fall the panel (which one of us, Daniel Simons, served on) released a comprehensive report that recommended procedures to minimize the chances of false memory and mistaken identification, including videotaping police lineups and improving jury instructions.

A critical concern about eyewitness memory is the sometimes tenuous relationship between the accuracy of a witness’s memory and his confidence in it. In general, if you have seen something before, your confidence that you have seen it and your accuracy in recalling it are linked: The more confident you are in your memory, the more likely you are to be right. But new research reveals important nuances about this link.
In a paper published earlier this year, the cognitive psychologists Henry L. Roediger III and K. Andrew DeSoto tested how well people could recall words from lists they had studied, and how measured they were in their recollections. For words that were actually on the lists, when people were highly confident in their memory, they were also accurate; greater confidence was associated with greater accuracy. But when people mistakenly recalled words that were similar to those on the lists but not actually on the lists — a false memory — they also expressed high confidence. That is, for false memories, higher confidence was associated with lower accuracy.

To complicate matters further, the content of our memories can easily change over time. Nearly a century ago, the psychologist Sir Frederic Charles Bartlett conducted a series of experiments that mimicked the “telephone” game, in which you whisper a message to the person next to you, who then passes it along to the person next to them, and so on. Over repeated tellings, the story becomes distorted, with some elements remaining, others vanishing, and entirely new details appearing.

When we recall our own memories, we are not extracting a perfect record of our experiences and playing it back verbatim. Most people believe that memory works this way, but it doesn’t. Instead, we are effectively whispering a message from our past to our present, reconstructing it on the fly each time. We get a lot of details right, but when our memories change, we only “hear” the most recent version of the message, and we may assume that what we believe now is what we always believed. Studies find that even our “flashbulb memories” of emotionally charged events can be distorted and inaccurate, but we cling to them with the greatest of confidence.

With each retrieval our memories can morph, and so can our confidence in them. This is why the National Academy of Sciences report strongly advised courts to rely on initial statements rather than courtroom proclamations: A witness who only tentatively identifies a suspect in a police station lineup can later claim — sincerely — to be absolutely certain that the defendant in the courtroom committed the crime. In fact, the mere act of describing a person’s appearance can change how likely you are to pick him out of a lineup later. This finding, known as “verbal overshadowing,” had been controversial, but was recently verified in a collective effort by more than 30 separate research labs.

The science of memory distortion has become rigorous and reliable enough to help guide public policy. It should also guide our personal attitudes and actions. In Dr. Tyson’s case, once the evidence of his error was undeniable, he didn’t dig his hole deeper or wish the controversy away. He realized that his memory had conflated his experiences of two memorable and personally significant events that both involved speeches by Mr. Bush. He probably still remembers it the way he described it in his talks — but to his credit, he recognizes that the evidence outweighs his experience, and he has publicly apologized.

Dr. Tyson’s decision is especially apt, coming from a scientist. Good scientists remain open to the possibility that they are wrong, and should question their own beliefs until the evidence is overwhelming. We would all be wise to do the same.

There’s a further twist to Dr. Tyson’s tale. Years before he misremembered what Mr. Bush said about 9/11, Mr. Bush himself misremembered what he had seen on 9/11. As the memory researcher Daniel Greenberg documented, on more than one occasion Mr. Bush recollected having seen the first plane hit the north tower of the World Trade Center before he entered a classroom in Florida.

In reality, he had been told that a plane had hit the building, but had not seen it — there was no live footage of the plane hitting the tower. Mr. Bush must have combined information he acquired later with the traces left by his actual experience to produce a new version of events, just as Dr. Tyson did. And just as Dr. Tyson’s detractors assumed that he had deliberately lied, some Bush critics concluded that he was inadvertently leaking the truth, and must have known about the attacks in advance.

Politicians are often caught misremembering their past, in part because their lives are so well documented. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign was momentarily sidetracked by her own false memory of a time when, on a trip to Bosnia as first lady, she had to skip a greeting ceremony and run from her plane under sniper fire. As often happens, her memory was an embellishment of a real event, a hooked fish that got bigger in the retelling — there was fighting in the region, but not close enough to be a threat. Our memories tend to morph to match our beliefs about ourselves and our world. Mrs. Clinton did go to dangerous places, but on the tarmac in Bosnia she was met by children, not bullets.

Do our heroes have memories of clay? Dr. Tyson, Mr. Bush and Mrs. Clinton are all intelligent, educated people. Ordinary memory failures say nothing about a person’s honesty or competence. But how we respond to these events can be telling.

Politicians should respond as Dr. Tyson eventually did: Stop stonewalling, admit error, note that such things happen, apologize and move on. But the rest of us aren’t off the hook. It is just as misguided to conclude that someone who misremembers must be lying as it is to defend a false memory in the face of contradictory evidence. We should be more understanding of mistakes by others, and credit them when they admit they were wrong. We are all fabulists, and we must all get used to it.

Family Circus

Loved that cartoon as a kid and you know the kids grew up to be like the parents that annoyed them equally and mutually.

I read this op-ed piece today and thought, “wow a piece written by a real working class individual how honest and refreshing” And given the last post about landlords forcing to evict tenants for needing the Police, I would like to think he gets the real truth.

I share it because he speaks his truth well.  That is all we ask for and I hope and know that one if not both sons will come home and it won’t be a version of Thomas Wolfe.

My Job Isn’t So Bad

By BERT STRATTON
Published: August 16, 2013

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio — GOOD news: unemployment fell to 7.4 percent in July — the lowest level since the end of 2008. But there’s bad news, too: most of the new jobs were low-wage, in retail and restaurants. They’re not the jobs that people want. I should know. No one wants my job, either. At least, nobody in my family. < I’m a landlord. It isn’t very glamorous. I just got a call: “There’s a smell of urine in the front of my apartment. Something is leaking from above.” But at least it’s pretty lucrative and stable. That’s what I tell my 32-year-old son, a recently minted lawyer.

“Come on, Son, make the rounds with me.” He has taught English in Korea; he has been a newspaper reporter; he has passed the Ohio bar. But things are tough out there; right now he’s an hourly contract worker at a big law firm. “Dad, I have something else to do.” My other son is 25 and a musician in a band called Vulfpeck in Los Angeles. Every middle-class kid from the Midwest is trying to make it in a bigger city. At the corner ice cream shop, I ran into a mom whose daughter is a personal assistant to a movie mogul. The mom said, “In 10 years my daughter and your son will run Hollywood.” Pure Cleveland. Dream on. I give my musician son at least five years before I press him to join the business. Right now I’m focusing on the lawyer.

Last January I got a fan letter from a young man who said he wanted to go into real estate and meet me. He wrote: “I’m looking for jobs in a variety of fields, but my primary interest is real estate. While I grew up in New York and have returned to the city for now, I have visited Cleveland and could easily imagine working there.”

I showed the letter to my son the lawyer. “You see,” I said.

He didn’t see.

I telephoned the letter writer. He said: “I figured you would call. My dad said not too many landlords in Cleveland get fan mail.”

Right. My fan — Jim, a 23-year-old liberal arts grad — lived with his parents in Manhattan. He’s a graduate of Carleton College. “That’s in Minnesota,” he said.

Jim came to Cleveland to talk real estate with me. I gave him the deluxe tour: a vacant storefront, a vacant apartment and a semi-vacant apartment. I knocked on the semi-vacant apartment door and said “maintenance” three times. Then I got out the master key.

There was a couch and a bed in the apartment. Tenants always leave behind the heavy stuff. TVs too. Everyone upgrades his TV on move-out. There was a junk heap of small items: pennies, beer cans and unopened bills. Enough to fill three garbage bags. The refrigerator was missing a couple of crucial shelves. Always happens. Why? There were clothes strewn about, but the tenant’s socks were gone. No socks meant no tenant.

“The guy skipped,” I said. That was probably worth four years of Carleton.

Jim said he couldn’t get into the landlord business in New York. One suite in New York costs an entire building in Cleveland.

I said, “I don’t have enough work for you right now, unless you want to paint walls.” He didn’t. “I don’t buy and sell buildings every day. I don’t have that much white-collar stuff going on.”

Jim returned to New York. I guarded his letter. It was United States mail, not e-mail. I’ve shown it to everybody. A lot to my sons.

I have white-collar openings for my sons. That’s different. That’s family business.

I’ll wait my boys out. I know how it goes. … Flashback, 1980, Boca Raton, vacation: My dad expounds on the incredible growth in Florida. “This was a two-lane dirt road when we got here. Now it’s six lane.” With a bagel store on every other block. My dad thought about real estate constantly.

“You ever think about our properties when you’re down here?” he asked. “You ever dream about the buildings?”

“No.”

Back in Ohio, I served an eviction notice on a painter — a real artist — for my father. The tenant was late with her rent. I handed her the eviction, and she yelled, “I was going to pay the rent, but not now!”

My father sent me! I’m a cool dude! I was 30.

My father’s properties were prewar buildings in Lakewood, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. He started the business in 1965. I kept it going and expanded it. At different times, I’ve had my sons cleaning halls and collecting rent. They asked, “I went to college for this?”

Quite possibly. I did.

I’m a proud dad; my sons will probably be big successes. But I can’t help hoping at least one of them comes back to the family business. Unemployment is down, but underemployment isn’t.