That’s not a valid excuse

I note, with no surprise whatsoever, that the brother of the gang-banger who was shot dead in New Orleans by criminal rivals this week (along with two innocent bystanders) is making excuses for him.

“He’s being characterized as a gang member, a killer. I feel like it’s a slap in the face … like he got what he deserved.”

The brother of the man who was targeted in a shooting on Claiborne Avenue that left three people dead and seven others injured is speaking out against the way his brother has been characterized by police and the media.

. . .

NOPD Chief Michael Harrison has said the shooting was gang-related, and multiple news outlets have since reported on Lee’s criminal past.

Speaking at a vigil Tuesday evening in the same parking lot where 10 people were shot days earlier, Jamil Hill, Lee’s brother, said “I’m frustrated with the press that my brother is getting.”

“He was a product of his environment,” Hill lamented. “We can’t control what neighborhood we grew up in. We can’t control any of that. I think they’re focusing too much on the victims and not the actual problem, which is crime in New Orleans.”

. . .

“They’re looking at his record and holding convictions from four or five years ago,” Hill said. “There’s nothing for these kids to do … but look up to the neighborhood drug dealers. His mother is very affected by the way he’s being characterized.”

There’s more at the link.

The thing none of these apologists ever mention is that a great many people grow up in the same suburbs, under the same conditions, who do not become gang-bangers.  It’s not the environment that makes the criminal – it’s the individual’s personal choices.  Those choices may be made more difficult by the absence of a suitable father figure as an example, or a greater prevalence of crime in the neighborhood – but that doesn’t mean they can’t be made.  Many people make the right choices in spite of those problems.

When I worked as a prison chaplain, I met dozens of convicts who were of above-average intelligence, had an interesting family background, and had plenty of opportunities to make a success of their lives.  Instead, they chose to fly in the face of all those advantages, and turn to crime.  I remember one man in particular, convicted of bank robbery and facing thirty-plus years in jail.  He was still a relatively young man when I met him.  His family had loads of money;  in fact, while I knew him, one of his relatives died and left him a substantial amount in her will.  (This may not have done him any favors:  it resulted in his being transferred to a higher-security prison, because he now had sufficient funds at his disposal to pay for a prison break attempt, if he so chose – a real security risk.)  He could have been anything and done anything that he desired, but he chose bank robbery because “it was exciting, like a drug, man”.  He won’t be out of prison until he’s in his fifties.  A life thrown away, because he chose to throw it away.

Last year, we saw another example of this when New Orleans rapper Donovan “Dula” Chopin tried to rob a gun store in Georgia.  I put up security camera footage of him being shot by the store owner – and then, a week later, pointed out that his family was trying to crowd-fund money for his funeral, emoting about how he was a good boy who was “called home”.  (The blunt, sometimes very rude comments from those who knew the facts have since been “sanitized”, and can no longer be viewed online.  No surprise, that.)  The same lack of focus upon his criminal choices was evident in his family’s and friends’ comments.  It wasn’t his fault – it was his environment, or that he was “led astray” by others, or whatever.  Never any recognition that his own bad choices led to his death.

(EDITED TO ADD:  Courtesy of some sleuthing by reader Andrew Smith, you can read the crowd-funding appeal for Mr. Chopin’s funeral – and the less than polite comments left in response – here.)

As long as people refuse to face up to the reality of personal responsibility for our choices, this sort of nonsense will continue.

Peter