Recent Reno tragedy -- two kids and a baseball bat.

Bill Martino

Bill Martino

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Right here in Sparks, Reno's next door neighbor, 3 or 4 days back two teenage boys, 15 and 17, armed with a baseball bat attacked and robbed a couple of local doctors one of whom Yangdu had seen for a physical exam a couple of years back.

The doctors are Muslim and had been attending a gathering at a local mosque and Muslim center. One doctor got a broken arm but was able to run back into the mosque and out of the way of futher harm. The other doctor (Yangdus' doc) took a couple of skull smashing blows to the head and is in the hospital in critical condition. The 15 year old has been arrested. The 17 year old, an escapee from a detention center in Calif. is still at large.

Two reasons for this post. One is to demonstrate that a baseball bat or any similar club makes a deadly weapon. The second is this attack was robbery motivated. Broken arm and almost fatal broken head for one measly wallet with a little cash and a couple of credit cards. Not a lot for nearly taking a human life, is it? Somehow when it happens in your own back yard the impact is greater.

A couple of years back some youngsters here shot and killed a cab driver -- robbery motive -- they got $35 and the rest of their lives in prison for their effort. Again, $35 for a human life does not seem like a lot to me.

What the hell is wrong with these kids anyway?

Sometimes I think I want to move to a cave up in the hills and become a hermit.

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Blessings from the computer shack in Reno.

Uncle Bill
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That is a hard story. I agree that people have devalued human life. I see people treat their dogs better than their kids. The hermit life is appealling to me too sometimes.
 
Maybe parents should be licensed for kids just like we are licensed for pets. In today's society we are working more, stressed more, and doing fewer things to bring us together as a community. The fewer relationships we have to other human beings the less value other human beings have. Thanks to television, cars and computers people spend much less time interacting with neighbors and communities are a thing of the past. America is a dangerous place, but I have a feeling that there is no going back.

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Steve Agocs, D.C.
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No. No hermit life. Our children are the result of prolonged, concentrated attacks on everything we codgers grew up believing, as if attacking morality and family is somehow an enlightened idea. What's wrong with them, Uncle, is that they have been taught that they and they alone matter. We live in a culture that emphasizes self-expression and gratification but leaves out the societal responsibility. You just witnessed the ultimate expression of that curse on America, "self esteem".
We, the adults with consciences, let it happen. We let the educators, the entertainers, the self styled intellectuals overturn the cumulative experience of centuries and only protested feebly.
What is called for is for us to demand accountability and to exert our influence on the community around us. No surrender!

Rant is over, but I am right. Insha'Allah those two followers of the Prophet (pbuh) will recover.

Stephen


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Micah 6:8. Well worth the attempt!
 
That was after catching one of the perpetrators and interrogating him. Up to then it had been reported all week as a hate crime.

Last night's news also carried the response from the Muslim community, and they aren't buying that it wasn't a hate crime at all. I agree with them.

Irregardless of whether those two juveniles were aware of their victims ethnicity, religion, or country of origin, for them to have attacked fellow humans with baseball bats gratuitously was out-and-out hatred.

Incidents like this make me consider how grateful and lucky I am to not live in a dehumanizing big city. They also increase my determination to have an utterly overwhelming response immediately available because despite where I live, people are people.

The sixth of Col. Cooper's "Seven Principles of Personal Defense" is ruthlessness. ( Alertness, Decisiveness, Aggressiveness, Speed, Precision, Ruthlessness, Surprise. ) 'Nuff said.

 
Bill wrote -

"Right here in Sparks, Reno's next door neighbor, 3 or 4 days back two teenage boys, 15 and 17, armed with a baseball bat attacked and robbed a couple of local doctors"

And this made the news?

Over here, that kind of thing is now so commonplace, the papers aren't interested any more. Even a recent case where a burglar broke into the home of an 87-year old guy and broke his neck with an iron bar, leaving him paralysed, only got an inch or so of newsprint.

Interestingly, a recent survey by the Univeristy of Leiden revealed that 27% of the UK population are victims of crime *every year* - the only industrialised nation with a higher rate is Australia.

(And what does the UK have in common with Australia, but not the USA - which was a long way down the list? No prize for guessing)

Count yourself lucky you live in a country where such horrific outrages are rare enough to be reported on the news.
 
:
Bro I too would trade today's world for the '40's anytime.
Back then words were more than words and Honor, Truth, Responsiblity, and Trust all meant something, now when those words are mentioned many young people just laugh at you.
It's hard to pin point just when the current culture began, but I think a lot of it was when Sir, Ma'am, Miss, Mr. and Mrs. became the way of the past. And the fact that too many people started sending their kids to the religious services of their choice instead of taking them or not believeing in anything.


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>>>>---Yvsa-G@WebTV.net---->®

"VEGETARIAN".............
Indin word for lousy hunter.
 
You have a strong point, Rusty.

I knew the UK was bad, Tom, but didn't realize it was that bad. Arm your citizens!

Bro, I find the way of life and people here 50 or 60 years back to be on a considerably higher level than today and I am almost convinced that we will never get it back and because of this I am quite sad for my grandchildren.

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Blessings from the computer shack in Reno.

Uncle Bill
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whatever the case, i believe that the punishment should fit the crime. i grew up in this era of gratuitous violence, and yet i refrain from beating people with baseball bats. those two pieces of schitt is a big reason why i gave my mom a la griffe.(she said that the vaquero grande was scary!!! women thing i guess.)
 
There are no limits now. It used to be that society regulated the behavior of it's members thru social pressure and having expected norms of behavior. Sometimes they were excessive or simply wrong like racism, or the whole "wrong side of the tracks" stereotype but even that was better than what we have now which is anarchy.

Since the 50's the media has glorified anti-heroes, senseless violence, outrageous sexual behavior and general defiance of the entire idea of a moral code of any kind. As a result there are people walking around in our society right now who deep down inside have no concept that there are any limits to what they can do. No one ever said no to them as children and made it stick. I'm not talking beating here, just saying no and restraining a child from doing something wrong so that they get the idea that someone can and will stop them, that there are limits. Then, all of a sudden this "child" is six feet tall, weighs 165#, is full of hormones and has every toy he could want except a purpose or place in life and a lot of time on his hands and no one can say "boo" to him until he commits his first felony, and by then it's too late.

Things that look like people but regard human beings as prey, things that walk on two legs but are not restrained by any social or moral limits. Feral man.

Sorry, 'bout going off folks, sore point I guess.
 
The kids will get 30 to life or maybe just life and the taxpayers will have to shell out a million or so bucks to keep them locked up for this time. Justice for all? BS!

I don't blame anybody for ranting. All this is something to rant about.

In just my own lifetime I have seen things go terribly wrong in this country and maybe if we start ranting and trying to get something done to turn it around we can save it -- but I don't have a lot of hope, truthfully and very sorry to say.

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Blessings from the computer shack in Reno.

Uncle Bill
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Rape, robbery, murder, theft…

These things have been going on for a long time. Someone once said "Lay not up your treasures where moth and rust doth corrupt, and theives break in and steal." He dealt with those issues long ago.

Before the Crips we had the Mongol hordes and sabretooth tigers. The old west had "kids" (Billy the) with sixguns. I don't think there has been a time when you didn't have to take care of yourself.

My perspective is changing though. Used to be the old guys were doing the bad stuff. Every year that passes makes it seem like they're younger and younger. Even the crooked politicians are looking young these days.
wink.gif

 
I have always said that if you really want to do away with poverty, crime, illiteracy, etc just make it as difficult to HAVE children as it is to ADOPT children. The only real difficulty I can forsee is the sudden sharp increase in unemployed first grade teachers.

Some where I saw a story that said that now that firearms are (effectively) illegal in the UK, as many as three million automatic weapons have been smuggled in from Bosnia and other Eastern war zones, and even the police are now, in some areas, going armed. But hey, it's "for the children," right? Lord, but I am getting tired of that phrase. When people tell me that children are the future, my reply is "yes, and nothing depresses me more."

Tom
 
Tom, it must be my weird sense of humor kicking in again but that last line made me laugh out loud!

Howard, I'll agree that the world has always been a pretty tough place to live but I never heard of a school shooting when I was going to school and of all the graduates from Cherokee, KS high school, CCHS, from 1901 until it closed in about 1961 only one kid that I know of ever spent any time in jail (grand theft). And he later became the town marshall.

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Blessings from the computer shack in Reno.

Uncle Bill
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My cousin, an old line social worker, gets set off by just that comment. She thinks it's a (seven-letter-word for condemnation by the deity) crying shame you can have kids without showing you have the sense of a jackass...

As for me, I'm more quiet about my feelings. My wife still remembers the day I came home from work at the welfare office, didn't even say hello, loaded (with Exploders) and slipped on a .41 mag and headed right back out the door with a Police Positive to lend a co-worker also threatened by the same "client". Good thing I was in a hurry or I'd have put on the left-hand one of the pair also.

"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." George Orwell

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Rusty


[This message has been edited by Rusty (edited 03-21-2001).]
 
I'm not sure that things were ever really any different than they are now.

If you're going around unarmed, you are eventually going to be a victim.

I truly hope that they will both live long and happy lives and also go out and get Nevada CCW's.

-Dave
 
Howdy, all.

I have a feeling my experience (a shrink working in a hospital smack in the middle of an inner-city neighborhood eaten up with heroin and crack) is similar to Rusty's working at the welfare office.

Our nights in the ER consist, in roughly equal portions, of taking care of people who are REALLY sick (blazing psychotic, suicidal, etc.) and dealing with polysubstance abusers who've decided to come in and claim to be suicidal so they can get detox'd for the umpteenth time. It can really burn you out. Some of their stories sound like they're from another world. Half my female patients have three or four kids by two or three fathers whom they never got around to marrying. Half my male patients have 4-5 kids scattered all over the place and talk to them on the phone once a month. They don't think this is strange. It's an ugly culture.

I had another interesting conversation with a new pal of mine- a Texas boy, who's now a 4th-year medical student and is going to be one of the best orthopedic surgeons in the country when he starts his practice. In between swapping shooting stories, he mentioned to me that on one medical rotation he was taking care of an ex-Army Sergeant for a cardiac condition. He told me that more time on rounds was spent on how to convince the old fella to get rid of his .45 than on how to manage his blood pressure! When my pal wondered out loud why they were doing that, they looked at him like he'd crawled out of a ditch. I thought it was funny. Me, I got my first rifle when I was 10. If I pointed that thing anywhere but at the sky, the ground, or the target I knew damn well my Dad was going to have that thing locked away for quite a while. Same if I had the safety off when I didn't mean to shoot anything. I learned to respect the weapon. Kids who see nothing but John Woo movies where a .45 has a fifty-shot clip and solves all problems have a different way of looking at things.

Our forensic psychiatry expert gave a grand rounds on assessing the risk of violence. One thing that was really stunning was a graph of violent crimes and murders across time. Fairly level until early-mid 80's, then SKYROCKETS. And it wasn't guns that were introduced in the 80's, it was crack cocaine.

I do agree that our culture's gone way off the rails. We're so busy trying not to judge anybody that we can't be bothered to notice when people are tearing themselves apart because nobody's telling them they have to stop.

Men are getting into trouble, these days, too, I think. What happened to women is coming around to men. Seems like having "six-pack abs" or all your hair is starting to mean more than whether your handshake means something or you have the guts to hang around and raise your kids. Makes me sick to see some of the popular music stars making millions calling themselves "thugs" while telling everybody how they're victims. Maybe they are, but I don't think it's for what they think it is.


 
ARRGH - shame it's too dark out to hack something up with a khuk.

[This message has been edited by Rusty (edited 03-22-2001).]
 
DocPat, also look at the way the parents of the 60's rejected the way they were raised, without anything to replace it with. So their kids were teens in the 70's & 80's and utterly clueless when they had kids at 15 or 16. Now the grandchildren of the 60's are teens.

And Ron S is right, there are not only no limits, they wouldn't understand one til they got punched in the nose.

Howard also defined something for me - they're now deciding it wasn't a hate crime because it was random and a robbery. If a woman was robbed and then they decided to rape her afterward, would they let them off on the rape? And you are right, violence runs in cycles.

Yvsa: honor, truth, responsibility, and trust... nowadays those in their 40's and up don't even talk about them for fear they'll be taken as scam artists or worse, chumps. They still mean something to us, but we mostly conceal it. Except here where we can admit our anguish.

Oh and before I forget DocPat, I lost my sense of humor after a couple kids died, ( somewhere around Child Abuse/Neglect investigation #150 ) and I took a deputy and strip searched a baby for signs of abuse/neglect - in the embalming room of the mortuary. Then sent the body back to Reno for an autopsy.

I think I had 500+ investigations when I switched to the addictions field. After all, I had the "experience" whatever way you want to interpret that.

"All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well." Julian of Norwich

Oh well, I think I'll go sharpen my two-hand sword.

Peace and Serenity unto us all

By the way, DocPat, the icon in my signature is in honor of Frank Farrely whose book "Provocative Therapy" models the therapist as court jester. (It's back in print and a hoot!)

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Rusty
 
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