If a child falls in the hood and no one cares to hear about it....

..should we make a sound? Of course we should. We owe our children that much.

As my man Reggie Warrington [Dave Chappelle] told Buddy Love [Eddie Murphy] in the Nutty Professor; "it's time to attack black."

So here we go again. It seems like every now and then I have to go on one of these rants. My Killadelphia murder count on the sidebar of this blog is not enough. Black folks, unfortunately, have become numb to the senseless killing of our children by our children. So what if three more young men were murdered this past week in Philly? Or if well over thirty school aged children have been murdered in Chicago this year? (How come Oprah doesn't have a show about that? I guess Dr. Phil doesn't do grief counseling) We have come to expect it.

But every now and then there is a murder that shocks our collective conscience and plays itself into the national psyche. Instead of a line or two in the metro page of the local paper, it makes national news. Bryan Williams is talking about it, and middle A-merry-cas is watching it with their hands over their mouths. In the hood people are wondering what's the big deal. How come this one made the national news and all the others didn't?

Well maybe it's because this one played itself out on video like a twisted reality television show for all of us to see. -And in the president's hometown no less- Urban terrorist beating a young honor student to death. No remorse, no heart, and no hesitation. Like a pack of animals who have strayed far away from their human DNA. You have all seen the video by now. If you haven't maybe you should. And when you do, take a long hard look at those those urban terrorist and try to find something. Maybe a clue as to why they act the way that they do. Something. Anything. I looked. In fact, I am always looking.

Here is what I see whenever I look: Children-wait, I take that back; boys without fathers. Young men with no men in their lives. Young men being raised by the streets and all sorts of negative influences. Most of them are here compliments of some sperm donor who just kept getting up. Absent fathers who thought that mom had a fat ass and was a "hell a nice shot".

I never see those sperm donors in criminal court when the cases are being called and the defendant's are being led into the courtroom. Only girlfriends, grandmothers, and mothers. The only black males I see in the court rooms are the sheriffs. When I go into the home of a potential client, the only people I negotiate with are mothers and grandmothers. Again, there is never a sperm donor in sight. That is my reality, and it's better than any scientific study you can cook up from some fancy Ivy League school. Oh field, stop it, what do you expect these men to do? What about the women who hook up with them? What about them? I can't speak for the women. All I know is that more often or not she is the one left to raise the child by herself. The sperm donor is always long gone and nowhere around. Regardless of who zoomed who.

I am so sick of seeing the vigils, the teddy bears, and the prayer groups in front of crime scenes. Because the sad reality is that tomorrow, just like clockwork, some poor child will be snatched from us by an urban terrorist all over again.

Today, Al Sharpton,Newt Gingrich, and Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, toured the schools here in Philly. (Talk about strange bedfellows)They were here to praise the charter school system in our fine city and push for longer hours in school. That's all fine. But our schools could stay open twenty four hours a day and it wouldn't make a damn difference to the urban terrorist out here. The kids who want to learn will be there, and the others will keep doing what they are doing now: be disruptive, make it harder for the other kids, and create a poor overall learning environment.

But let's keep it real with each other. The schools can only do so much. Everything starts at home.

I know that I am preaching to the choir here, because most of you who read this blog with children don't need to here this. I am sure that your children are fine. But what about the rest of them? All of our children. A-merry-ca's children. (Well, black A-merry-ca's children, because I am quite sure that the rest of A-merry-ca would never claim them. They would much rather adopt a nice little Asian or Russian girl...let me stop.) How do we get to them? How do we stop the sperm donors? It's, for the most part, a question that is orotund in nature. Because as much as I have tried to figure it out, I swear that I don't know the answer.

Urban terrorist and the people charged to control them.

I will be the first to admit that sometimes a cell phone can seem like a deadly weapon. Like, for instance, when I am trying to relax in a public area or concentrate on what I am doing, only to be drawn into someones conversation who happens to be two city blocks away.

Still, I think it's a bit much to think someone is going to blast away and cause you serious bodily harm with their cell phone. Unfortunately, for 22 year old Woodrow Wilson Player, (What self respecting black person names their son Woodrow Wilson? The man was a flat out racist who segregated the federal government and praised the KKK. But I digress. ) the LAPD doesn't seem to agree. Pull a cell phone on the LAPD and that's your ass. I guess they hate cell phones as much as I do.

"According to a preliminary investigation, the incident began when sheriff's deputies from the Lennox Station responded to an alleged 'man with a gun' call. The suspect was allegedly driving a vehicle. The deputies made a 'felony' traffic stop, and the suspect got out of his car and ran, Thompson said. Deputies gave chase, and Player twice pointed a 'dark object' at deputies, causing them to believe he was armed with a handgun. When investigators searched the alley where the shooting occurred, they recovered a cellphone next to Player, not a gun, said sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore.'It appears the dark object was a cellphone,' Whitmore said. Player was declared dead at the scene."

Now before you go thinking that this is just another field painting the poor innocent black man as a victim of police brutality story, it is not. (Although this stuff is starting to get a bit much with LA's finest.) Shit like this happens every day. If that was the case I could do two or three posts a day with nothing but this stuff. No, what made me post this story was all the fascinating layers to it, and how it speaks to urban crime and violence.

This cat had beaten a murder charge before, and he was no angel. Like Snoop, he was a crip, but unlike Snoop, he was no rapper. Still, he should not have lost his life allegedly at the hands of an untrained police officer, or worse, a police officer determined to give out his own personal brand of justice. In spite of what scum like this would want. (Did I call these people scum? I shouldn't have. Scum deserves better.) If he was a bad guy (which by all accounts he was) he should have been charged with a crime, taken off the street, and left to the criminal justice system to handle him. If he was allowed to walk free because of poor prosecuting or policing, then maybe the people of Los Angeles County should vote out their District Attorney. Or maybe thy should revisit how their probation and parole department keeps track of some of these multiple offenders. And it's not only Los Angeles. As someone who has been in the belly of the beast a time or two here in Philly, --been in some of the worst holding cells in the district and in the prisons- I can tell you that incarceration is not a deterrent. To many, it's a badge of honor. You can almost see the pride in their eyes when you hear some of these young bucks talking about just "coming home" after doing time. It's as if they were home from college or some shit.

But back to my original story, because it gets even more bizarre:

"UPDATE: Four people were shot and injured this afternoon in Athens while standing in an alley where another man was killed Friday night by sheriff’s deputies.

Paramedics had responded to the shooting and were transporting the injured, three men and one woman, to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. Sheriff’s deputies ordered a gathering crowd to calm down after what appeared to be a drive-by shooting.

Witnesses said that at about 2:30 p.m., an old model gray Buick with three men inside stopped in front of the alley and about a dozen shots were fired from the car, which then sped away."

This seems to be a new phenomenon. Just a week or so ago the same thing happened right here in Philly. Hell there have been shootings at funerals here in Philly, so I guess it's not so new after all.

Wow! We can't even let each other grieve in peace now. Is this is what it's come to? I would love to say that it will end and that we will get a handle on it soon. But when the people on the front lines who are charged with controlling these urban terrorist can't do their jobs, I really have to wonder.