minutes after the shooting.
The first 911 call was not made until 9:36 a.m., but police did not reveal
who made it. Donkor said he tried to call 911 immediately after he was told
about the shooting but got a recording and hung up.
Ramsey has been criticized by D.C. Council members and others for rising
homicide totals and for homicide clearance rates that are lower than the
average for other cities. The chief has contended that witnesses who could
help police get killers off the streets do not come forward.
This is the kind of thing that we're up against, Ramsey said. To have
someone walk by as if nothing occurred is frustrating.
U.S. Attorney Roscoe C. Howard Jr. echoed that complaint, saying that
relatively few slayings in the District occur in secluded spots. But
witnesses simply won't come forward, he said, adding, If you've got 262
murders in a year, and you're not able to solve half of them, reluctant
witnesses must be an issue.
Still, former D.C. police chief Isaac Fulwood Jr., who oversaw the
department when crack cocaine led to a surge in killings in the late 1980s
and early 1990s, said the reaction to Price's death amazed him.
Something's wrong, I mean, something's very wrong and callous, and [it] is
getting worse, Fulwood said.
Julia Dunkins, chief executive of Survivors of Homicide Inc., said people
from across the city have become desensitized to death. We have to stop
saying, 'My community isn't like this. This kind of thing could not happen
in my area,' Dunkins said.
Louis R. Mizell Jr., a security consultant who maintains a 40,000-category
database on crimes, said similar episodes have unfolded throughout the
country.
We record hundreds of cases nationwide each year in which people witnessed
horrible crimes but react with depraved indifference, refusing to intervene
or even call 911, Mizell said. The encouraging news, however, is that we
record thousands of cases in which people did get involved, often heroically
and at their own peril.
Along Florida Avenue, other merchants said they were not shocked by the
crime or the behavior of the witnesses.
At Coast In Liquors, a clerk said he could remember an attempted robbery two
years ago in which a man came after him with a stick and then threw bricks
at his windows.
Outside the store, people stopped to watch but did nothing to intervene, he
said.
Nobody [was] trying to help, said the clerk, who wouldn't give his name.
They were looking. You know how people do.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
Original Message Follows
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Speaking of Illegal Guns and Deterrence
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 02:48:47 EST
In light of the list's recent discussions regarding illegal guns and
deterrence of crimes, I thought people might find the following of
interest.
David
(Ronald) Dixon was upstairs, in bed, when he heard a noise in the
hallway.
Half asleep, he opened his eyes and saw a man at the top of the stairs
heading toward the bedroom of Mr. Dixon's 2-year-old son, Kyle. That was
enough for the father. He grabbed a 9-millimeter pistol that he kept in a
closet, walked toward the man and asked what he was doing there. This man,
Mr. Dixon said, ran at him, screaming. That's when he pulled the trigger.
He
shot the intruder twice, wounding him seriously but not mortally. Other
points are worth noting.
Mr. Dixon, 27, is your basic straight arrow, a Navy veteran who works two
jobs as a computer specialist to provide for his girlfriend and their two
small children. The man accused of being the intruder, Ivan Thompson, 40,
is
a career lowlife with a blocklong record of burglaries and other crimes.
If
convicted this time, he could be hammering out license plates for years to
come.
Case closed, you might think. But there is one more critical detail:
Mr. Dixon's gun was illegal. He had no New York license for it. He also
lives in a borough whose district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, considers
the
prosecution of illegal-gun charges a supreme virtue. Mr. Hynes wants Mr.
Dixon to do jail time - not much, but at least some. If convicted of the
misdemeanor charge against him, Mr. Dixon could get as much as a year. Mr.
Hynes is offering a plea bargain that would involve four weekends, tops,
on
Rikers Island.
'Nobody,' the district attorney said, 'is going to get a bye' on a gun
charge. 'Everybody is going to do some time. There have to be some
consequences. The Dixon case is a perfect example of what we're trying to
do. We're sympathetic. No question, he had the right to shoot the guy in
his
house. But he had no right to have an illegal weapon.'
- New York Times, 2/7/03
_
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