It wasn't a car backfiring this time

Growing up just outside of Detroit, violence was not a foreign concept to me but it was never in my backyard. We watched the nightly news, read the metro papers and constantly heard talk of shootings and stabbings and standoffs and all things horrible that came out of big cities. This was Detroit in the 80s and 90s mind you. But we didn't live there. We only heard about it. It was different.

When I moved to Yuma, the violence got a little closer. Things happened in our neighborhood, we couldn't walk down the alley between our apartment complex and the grocery store even though it would cut our trip in half. We couldn't drive down certain roads in certain neighborhoods because I had a red car and more importantly, because we were "white girls". We stopped crossing the border to buy the sublime Coca Lite and family gifts in Mexico because we heard too many horror stories of people never coming back. Then some of our middle school students were involved in a fatal shooting at the town mall on Valentine's Day night one year. The violence encroached. But we were still just outside of it.

Tuesday night at 7pm the violence got closer. Way too close. I was sitting in my bedroom, just checking my email, when I heard four pops. I looked out my window and thought to myself it's just a car backfiring. Yep, a car, must be. But then, within seconds, I heard the screams. They were just far enough away that it sounded like I was in a movie or maybe a little underwater but the sound was unmistakable. I said to Angela, what are the odds, a car backfires and then kids scream? We hear kids constantly as we live between an elementary school, a high school and a park. But this was different. And it didn't stop. Then we heard the sirens. So many sirens. And when I looked out the front window I saw the police helicopter that's a familiar sight, do a 180 degree turn in the air and dive bomb our neighborhood.

My first thought was the park. Oh the park. Home to Little League games and softball games and tennis matches and so many kids playing. And that's exactly where it happened. Apparently a gang banger got out of a running car, proceeded to the basketball courts, fired, and fled. Yes, he got away. And the bullets he intended for a rival gang banger? Well, they hit him and two other people there enjoying the park and the Little League games. Because bullets don't know the difference between gang banger scum and plain old citizens. Bullets just injure and kill.

No one was killed Tuesday night, for that I'm so grateful. And according to the police, arrest warrants have been issued for this "isolated incident". But it's still scary, because the violence is here. It's not in Detroit a city we almost never visit. It's not in the gang neighborhood on the other side of the city or border. It's in my backyard. It's close enough that I can hear the gun shots. Still.

This wasn't the first shooting we had in our neighborhood this year. Five people shot since January (four at the park, one at the high school). All injured. There was a shooting last summer that left one man dead just a few feet from the park entrance. There were two stabbings in the park across from the high school a couple of months back. It's close.

And yet? I felt enormous pride and a sense of safety yesterday as we trekked to that very same park and sat on folding chairs with a couple hundred neighbors to hear representatives from the Los Angeles police department, the park police department, the fire department, the mayor's office, the councilman's office and the crisis management team speak. We listened to the police officers we know by name tell us what had happened, what they're doing to help the situation, and how safe we actually are in our neighborhood. Did people believe them? Not really. It's all too fresh. But in time, things will return to normal. And I am confident we'll all be okay.

People spoke last night about gun control and putting up public cameras and stationing armed guards around the park. I sat there and silently shook my head. I wondered where all those people were every month when we meet as a neighborhood watch group and learn how to be safe, get to know the police officers in our city, and try to make our community a better place. I wondered. I wondered how many of them would come back in two weeks for that very meeting.

Was I scared that night? Yes. Was I scared when I drove by the high school yesterday and saw multiple police cars as the clock neared the end of the school day? A little. But was I scared last night when I walked the same steps where that woman laid Tuesday night, shot in the leg? No. As Captain Davis said last night, you can step off any curb and get hit by a car. A crossing guard wouldn't help that. Our community constantly tries to thwart the violence. Thwart the bad eggs. And I love that about us. I love that I know the kids who live here and they know me. I love chatting in the street with neighbors. I love seeing an LAPD car and waving to my friend who's driving it. I love recognizing the fire department captain on site. That takes work, and I'm so glad our community's doing it.