Curmudgeon's Corner

An Inner City Obituary

Posted by Al Campbell on July 22, 2011

Quality of Life, Political, Wisconsin, U.S., Education

Four strikes and he was done.  A young man from the ‘inner city’ died on Wednesday.  His name was “Trell”.  He lived near the corner of Locust and 24^th street…that was his “block”.  He graduated from Bay View High School in 2007.  He was 22 years old.

The Journal Sentinel published “Trell’s” story this morning, and it spoke volumes in just six column inches of space.  Unfortunately the news of a young man dying in our inner city of Milwaukee isn’t unusual.  It is actually quite commonplace.  Trell was homicide number 46 in Milwaukee for this year.

Trell was more unusual, though.  He had managed to graduate from high school.  He was shot in the head before his graduation and survived that gunshot wound.

Then he was shot again nine months later, five times, and survived that shooting.  Four months ago he was shot in the leg and survived that shooting.

The fourth shooting involved another five shots and that proved too much for Trell to survive.  There are no suspects in custody yet.

This young man had suffered twelve gunshot wounds from the time he was 18 until he lost his life at the age of 22.

I have no idea what kind of young man Trell was, whether he was involved in bad stuff, or whether he used drugs or was a member of a gang.  He may’ve been all or none of those things.  He lived in a really tough neighborhood and it cost him his life at the age of 22.  He was a human being and he died a violent death and that story was told on page 3B of the morning newspaper in six column inches.

His killer or killers may or may not be punished.  The killer or killers may or may not have remorse for the killing.  It seems that no amount of policing will ever solve the problems of this community.  It seems that all the government programs in the world, all the tax dollars that could possibly be moved into the inner city, just aren’t sufficient to turn this community around.

The inner city is a domestic war zone for too many of those who live there.  Government programs are simply not going to solve that problem.  Restoration of the nuclear family and restoration of human dignity and elimination of high unemployment rates will do far more than the handouts to which we have accustomed the residents of the inner city.  We have created the problem through what we thought was doing good for the residents when our money was actually creating and sustaining a dependency that destroys the family unit and the individuals within those communities.

There must be a better way than to create this kind of dependency.  Not often spoken is the role politics has played and continues to play in this sad story.