Not in My Neighborhood

Every time I see a story on the news about some horrible occurrence in town, someone always says "I never thought this could happen in my neighborhood." What makes a neighborhood immune to bad things? I even wonder about so-called "gated" communities. Are those people gating out the bad people or gating in the bad people.

Anything can happen anywhere at any time, even though the consequences of those actions are usually not the same. When two girls were attacked and murdered in certain neighborhoods in this city, folks mobilized, the culprit caught, and even a new law was put into place. When these things happen in other neighborhoods, sometimes the response is not as fast.

Just yesterday, a young girl told her parents that she had been assaulted and even gave the policemen descriptions of the so-called assailant. A couple of days later, with the prodding of the detectives, it turned out that she was lying. She met someone on line, ditched her afternoon classes (she is a tenth grader), met the man for a "nooner" and didn't want her parents to know why she was late coming from school. I suspect if this had happened in another neighborhood, she would already be in jail for lying to a policeman. When the story first broke, all of the people in the neighborhood talked about how shocked they were that something like this happened in their neighborhood. Now I don't know if they meant the assault or a lying teenager.

The Kerner report so many years ago was correct then and makes me wonder if it still describes our America today.Hmmmmmm.

Anything can happen anywhere at any time!