November 22, 2005 - Taking A Stand Against Violence

Taking A Stand Against Violence

November 22, 2005

Nikki Cobb and Brad A. Greenberg Staff Writers
San Bernardino County Sun

The body of 11-year-old Mynesha Crenshaw goes into the ground today.

Her soul, according to the faith of her family, will go to heaven.

And as a city in shock watches from afar, some see the memory of this slain child soaring above a destructive morass that has suffocated San Bernardino for two decades, delivering some hope to a people starving for it.

They are tired of the senseless slayings. They are tired of hiding, of staying silent, for fear they or their loved ones might meet a similar conclusion.

"We need to be outraged," said Councilman Rikke Van Johnson, whose district borders the neighborhood where Mynesha lived. "We can't be afraid anymore. That's the point we need to get out there."

The questions yet to be answered are: Like the proverbial Phoenix rising above the ashes, can some good come out of the slaughtering of innocence? Have people endured enough violence to force a change, as has been done in other types of tragedy around the United States?

Will they pressure the politicians not only locally but perhaps statewide or on the federal level to bring an end to a cycle that has spun for decades, ruining lives, destroying families and fanning fears not only in San Bernardino, but in nearly every urban pocket across the nation?

The politicians are apparently ready to listen.

"I don't know what kind of legislation I am going to come up with. But we have to do something," said State Sen. Nell Soto, D-Ontario. "We have to let people know we are not going to sit back and let these kids kill one another or kill innocent people."

Soto believes that starts in the home. She and other politicians say parents need to reform the culture of the street, need to teach their children that firing a gun is not an appropriate way to settle a score.

It seems simplistic. But in implementation, it may be unrealistic.

"We have said, `Enough is enough.' We have said, `We are taking back our streets.' We have said all of the that," said San Bernardino Mayor Judith Valles. "The problem is the gangs are spreading nationally. We are experiencing the first wave of them hitting our city of San Bernardino.

"We have got terrorists on our streets."

If that is the case, and many criminal justice experts would agree, the San Bernardino crime calls for a national solution.

U.S. Rep. Joe Baca, D-Rialto, said he plans to speak with other Inland Empire congressmen in hopes of securing federal funding for San Bernardino crime prevention.

"We can't play second fiddle (with) public safety," Baca said.

David Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said San Bernardino likely already has all the police officers and laws it needs to rid the streets of crime.

It's a matter of implementation. Because much of San Bernardino's problems are rooted in gangs, the city needs to take the same approach Boston did 10 years ago, he said.

Kennedy, who worked on Ceasefire in Boston, said gang members live in violation of the law. They sell and use drugs in public. They violate parole. They don't pay child support.

Law enforcement officials, he said, need to meet with known gang members to make one thing very clear: "The next time somebody from your group kills somebody, we are going to reach out and touch the entire group."

"This is easy. This is just ordinary law enforcement," said Kennedy. "What you then do, having made an example out of this group, you have a conversation with other groups. You make it clear to them that the next group who kills somebody in San Bernardino is going to get exactly the treatment these guys got.

"Suddenly, they all start policing each other."

Maybe they don't become law-abiding citizens, but at least they aren't killing kids like Mynesha.

Successful examples of something good emerging from something horrific are far and near.

The rape and murder of a 7-year-old by a New Jersey sex offender led to the creation of today's Megan's Law, which lets parents learn of sexual predators in their communities.

The abduction and subsequent slaying of a child in Texas created AMBER Alerts, the notification system of kidnapped children, and a similar instance of a man's heinous actions with an Orange County girl introduced Californians to the concept.

And thanks to a Yucaipa woman, parents of a newborn infant can legally give up their child without fear of prosecution. For nine years, Debi Faris-Cifelli pushed the effort, in addition to making a cemetery for abandoned babies who died alone and unknown.

"It really takes a community of people to come together," Faris-Cifelli said. "But somebody needs to stand up and take the lead. Those are the people who become heroes.

"A leader has to persevere and have the guts to say, `That was the old San Bernardino. This will be the new one. If a gang member wants to live in our city, you better change your ways.' "

Just nine days ago, Mynesha was anonymous to anyone other than a chosen few, namely her family and friends. That was before someone opened fire on a San Bernardino apartment and buried three bullets into her head and body as she sat down to eat dinner, leaving her gasping for life as her wounded sister fell beside her.

Police say Mynesha and her sister, Jaynita, now 15, who survived the shooting, were innocent victims ensnared in a gang-related slaying. The fact that a gang was involved came as little surprise in this city of 197,000 people. Among work-eligible adults, 40 percent make less than $25,000 a year.

This remains a place where in many neighborhoods, people refuse to call police for fear of equally horrific retaliation. They would rather gather their children around them and take hiding in their homes, as was the case in the minutes leading up to Mynesha's killing, praying that none of the bullets they hear exploding will come near them.

Those days must change. Doing so might come through watching what others have done to make grand shifts in thinking.

Making a difference

Polly Hannah Klaas was 12 years old when she was kidnapped from her Petaluma home on Oct. 1, 1993.

A massive and highly publicized manhunt followed. Police arrested Richard Allen Davis for the rape and murder of the little girl months later.

"For a family, there are basically three reactions you can have to something like this," said Marc Klaas, father of the victim. "There's denial, you can pretend it didn't happen and move on with life. There's always payback at some point, though.

"There's letting it destroy you, losing yourself in depression or alcohol or drug abuse."

"Or you can fight back," Klaas said. "You can make sure the child's loss extends beyond the pie charts, that she was more than a statistic. That's what I tried to do."

Klaas started the KlaasKids Foundation, an advocacy group that lobbies for tough legislation for crimes against children and helps families navigate the red tape when dealing with crisis.

A separate group, the Polly Klaas Foundation, helps support families searching for a missing child. Glena Records, director of communications for the Polly Klaas Foundation, said the little girl whose name the organization bears has had an impact.

"Polly made a huge difference" in the lives of other children, Records said. "It was the unique quality of the case."

"The kidnapper had actually come into an occupied house. It was as if everybody's home had been violated," she said.

Marc Klaas said the work he does in Polly's name keeps him going.

"It doesn't give me a lot of time to consider the consequence, the loss," he said. "I found my purpose, or all would be forgotten Polly forgotten, too."

Other organizations have also risen from a parent's or a community's response to a lost child.

Megan's Law, a nationwide registry and watchdog network for child sex offenders, was established after the rape and murder of 7-year old Megan Kanka in 1994.

Megan's murderer lived across the street from her home. He had been previously convicted for sexually assaulting another child, a history unknown to Megan's parents, Richard and Maureen Kanka.

The AMBER Alert plan, operating in all 50 states, is a system for broadcasting information to the public when a child is missing.

The plan was created in 1997 as a legacy to 9-year-old Amber Hagerman, kidnapped and murdered while peddling her bicycle in Arlington, Texas.

Five-year old Samantha Runnion was kidnapped by a man claiming to want her help finding his Chihuahua. The assailant raped and asphyxiated the child on July 15, 2002.

Today, the Joyful Child Foundation has a program, Samantha's Pride, to save other children from a similar fate.

Samantha's Pride helps neighborhoods organize, with all the adults pitching in, to look out for the children.

"For Samantha's family, the goal is for her not to have died in vain," said spokeswoman Shana Starr. "This is what they are dedicating their lives to, what they are dedicating (Samantha's) life to."

Helping out

Marc Klaas said such efforts can help deal with the pain. But nothing can take it away. "You can never make back the price paid," he said.

"Who the hell wants to build a legacy over their child's body?" Klaas asked.

"Living in memory and actually living are two very different things. Polly can live in our hearts, but those memories fade over time, as if they were a Polaroid," he said. "The price we paid was far too great."

Faris-Cifelli said her effort began by educating people to the sad situation involving the abandonment of newborns. People wanted to help, they just didn't know how, she explained.

The next step was empowering people. That came with the creation of the foundation, which led to contacting state legislators, primarily former State Sen. Jim Brulte, who took action in Sacramento.

"The media helped a lot, too," Faris-Cifelli said. "They really called it to attention. The media can really bring about change."

There's a delicate balance there for the media, though, between being an informative vehicle to becoming an advocate for change, said Bob Steele, a scholar on ethics at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank in Florida.

A newspaper has two roles, Steele said, when it comes to its community:

It gives readers substantive, factual information.

It provides context, history, information from outside the paper's geographical region, and acts not only as emotionally-evocative but provocative.

"When we write stories, we evoke emotion," Steele said. "Sometimes it might cause fear. Sometimes it might cause anger. Sometimes it might cause frustration. Sometimes it may be panic.

"We also write stories that evoke hope. Good journalism not only informs and educates, it gives citizens possibilities for how to respond."

Journalists are not cheerleaders or advocates, he added.

"But journalists are both conveying substantive information, giving citizens ways to process and reflect upon the information, and . . . communicate with each other as a community."

In the case of The Sun, the newspaper has dedicated several reporters and significant space on its pages every day since Mynesha's slaying.

"The death of a child, under any circumstances, is unfathomable to most of us," said Steve Lambert, The Sun's editor. "In cases like this, the media are uniquely positioned to raise awareness of the deeper issues that may be at play and in the end, help stir a constructive dialogue, and constructive change. We're not the story, but we can help raise the story to a new, higher level of understanding."

What everyone seems to understand, particularly, is that any change that does happen can be enabled by politicians. But for an effort to truly be propelled forward, it's up to people in the community.

Tom Dunham, spokesman for New York state Sen. Dean G. Skelos, R-Rockville Centre, author of that state's Megan's Law, the model for those that followed, lauded the mother of the victim in that case for pocketing her pain and striving for something good.

"A lot of the credit should go to Maureen Kanka for realizing she could take this horrible tragedy and turn it into something that could protect hundreds of thousands of children around the country," he said.

Within two years of Megan's death, every state in the union required sex offenders to register. The federal government also passed a law that would deprive state's grant money if they didn't create a registry.

Change, it appears, can indeed happen. And then, perhaps the real question becomes, the one still not answered, who has the heart for it?

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Taking A Stand Against Violence


November 22, 2005 Nikki Cobb and Brad A. Greenberg Staff Writers San Bernardino County Sun The body of 11-year-old Mynesha Crenshaw goes into the ground today. Her soul, according to the faith of her family, will go to heaven. And as a city in shock watches from afar, some see the memory of this slain child soaring above a destructive morass that has suffocated San Bernardino for two decades, delivering some hope to a people starving for it. They are tired of the senseless slayings. They are tired of hiding, of staying silent, for fear they or their loved ones might meet a similar conclusion. "We need to be outraged," said Councilman Rikke Van Johnson, whose district borders the neighborhood where Mynesha lived. "We can't be afraid anymore. That's the point we need to get out there." The questions yet to be answered are: Like the proverbial Phoenix rising above the ashes, can some good come out of the slaughtering of innocence? Have people endured enough violence to force a change, as has been done in other types of tragedy around the United States? Will they pressure the politicians not only locally but perhaps statewide or on the federal level to bring an end to a cycle that has spun for decades, ruining lives, destroying families and fanning fears not only in San Bernardino, but in nearly every urban pocket across the nation? The politicians are apparently ready to listen. "I don't know what kind of legislation I am going to come up with. But we have to do something," said State Sen. Nell Soto, D-Ontario. "We have to let people know we are not going to sit back and let these kids kill one another or kill innocent people." Soto believes that starts in the home. She and other politicians say parents need to reform the culture of the street, need to teach their children that firing a gun is not an appropriate way to settle a score. It seems simplistic. But in implementation, it may be unrealistic. "We have said, `Enough is enough.' We have said, `We are taking back our streets.' We have said all of the that," said San Bernardino Mayor Judith Valles. "The problem is the gangs are spreading nationally. We are experiencing the first wave of them hitting our city of San Bernardino. "We have got terrorists on our streets." If that is the case, and many criminal justice experts would agree, the San Bernardino crime calls for a national solution. U.S. Rep. Joe Baca, D-Rialto, said he plans to speak with other Inland Empire congressmen in hopes of securing federal funding for San Bernardino crime prevention. "We can't play second fiddle (with) public safety," Baca said. David Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said San Bernardino likely already has all the police officers and laws it needs to rid the streets of crime. It's a matter of implementation. Because much of San Bernardino's problems are rooted in gangs, the city needs to take the same approach Boston did 10 years ago, he said. Kennedy, who worked on Ceasefire in Boston, said gang members live in violation of the law. They sell and use drugs in public. They violate parole. They don't pay child support. Law enforcement officials, he said, need to meet with known gang members to make one thing very clear: "The next time somebody from your group kills somebody, we are going to reach out and touch the entire group." "This is easy. This is just ordinary law enforcement," said Kennedy. "What you then do, having made an example out of this group, you have a conversation with other groups. You make it clear to them that the next group who kills somebody in San Bernardino is going to get exactly the treatment these guys got. "Suddenly, they all start policing each other." Maybe they don't become law-abiding citizens, but at least they aren't killing kids like Mynesha. Successful examples of something good emerging from something horrific are far and near. The rape and murder of a 7-year-old by a New Jersey sex offender led to the creation of today's Megan's Law, which lets parents learn of sexual predators in their communities. The abduction and subsequent slaying of a child in Texas created AMBER Alerts, the notification system of kidnapped children, and a similar instance of a man's heinous actions with an Orange County girl introduced Californians to the concept. And thanks to a Yucaipa woman, parents of a newborn infant can legally give up their child without fear of prosecution. For nine years, Debi Faris-Cifelli pushed the effort, in addition to making a cemetery for abandoned babies who died alone and unknown. "It really takes a community of people to come together," Faris-Cifelli said. "But somebody needs to stand up and take the lead. Those are the people who become heroes. "A leader has to persevere and have the guts to say, `That was the old San Bernardino. This will be the new one. If a gang member wants to live in our city, you better change your ways.' " Just nine days ago, Mynesha was anonymous to anyone other than a chosen few, namely her family and friends. That was before someone opened fire on a San Bernardino apartment and buried three bullets into her head and body as she sat down to eat dinner, leaving her gasping for life as her wounded sister fell beside her. Police say Mynesha and her sister, Jaynita, now 15, who survived the shooting, were innocent victims ensnared in a gang-related slaying. The fact that a gang was involved came as little surprise in this city of 197,000 people. Among work-eligible adults, 40 percent make less than $25,000 a year. This remains a place where in many neighborhoods, people refuse to call police for fear of equally horrific retaliation. They would rather gather their children around them and take hiding in their homes, as was the case in the minutes leading up to Mynesha's killing, praying that none of the bullets they hear exploding will come near them. Those days must change. Doing so might come through watching what others have done to make grand shifts in thinking. Making a difference Polly Hannah Klaas was 12 years old when she was kidnapped from her Petaluma home on Oct. 1, 1993. A massive and highly publicized manhunt followed. Police arrested Richard Allen Davis for the rape and murder of the little girl months later. "For a family, there are basically three reactions you can have to something like this," said Marc Klaas, father of the victim. "There's denial, you can pretend it didn't happen and move on with life. There's always payback at some point, though. "There's letting it destroy you, losing yourself in depression or alcohol or drug abuse." "Or you can fight back," Klaas said. "You can make sure the child's loss extends beyond the pie charts, that she was more than a statistic. That's what I tried to do." Klaas started the KlaasKids Foundation, an advocacy group that lobbies for tough legislation for crimes against children and helps families navigate the red tape when dealing with crisis. A separate group, the Polly Klaas Foundation, helps support families searching for a missing child. Glena Records, director of communications for the Polly Klaas Foundation, said the little girl whose name the organization bears has had an impact. "Polly made a huge difference" in the lives of other children, Records said. "It was the unique quality of the case." "The kidnapper had actually come into an occupied house. It was as if everybody's home had been violated," she said. Marc Klaas said the work he does in Polly's name keeps him going. "It doesn't give me a lot of time to consider the consequence, the loss," he said. "I found my purpose, or all would be forgotten Polly forgotten, too." Other organizations have also risen from a parent's or a community's response to a lost child. Megan's Law, a nationwide registry and watchdog network for child sex offenders, was established after the rape and murder of 7-year old Megan Kanka in 1994. Megan's murderer lived across the street from her home. He had been previously convicted for sexually assaulting another child, a history unknown to Megan's parents, Richard and Maureen Kanka. The AMBER Alert plan, operating in all 50 states, is a system for broadcasting information to the public when a child is missing. The plan was created in 1997 as a legacy to 9-year-old Amber Hagerman, kidnapped and murdered while peddling her bicycle in Arlington, Texas. Five-year old Samantha Runnion was kidnapped by a man claiming to want her help finding his Chihuahua. The assailant raped and asphyxiated the child on July 15, 2002. Today, the Joyful Child Foundation has a program, Samantha's Pride, to save other children from a similar fate. Samantha's Pride helps neighborhoods organize, with all the adults pitching in, to look out for the children. "For Samantha's family, the goal is for her not to have died in vain," said spokeswoman Shana Starr. "This is what they are dedicating their lives to, what they are dedicating (Samantha's) life to." Helping out Marc Klaas said such efforts can help deal with the pain. But nothing can take it away. "You can never make back the price paid," he said. "Who the hell wants to build a legacy over their child's body?" Klaas asked. "Living in memory and actually living are two very different things. Polly can live in our hearts, but those memories fade over time, as if they were a Polaroid," he said. "The price we paid was far too great." Faris-Cifelli said her effort began by educating people to the sad situation involving the abandonment of newborns. People wanted to help, they just didn't know how, she explained. The next step was empowering people. That came with the creation of the foundation, which led to contacting state legislators, primarily former State Sen. Jim Brulte, who took action in Sacramento. "The media helped a lot, too," Faris-Cifelli said. "They really called it to attention. The media can really bring about change." There's a delicate balance there for the media, though, between being an informative vehicle to becoming an advocate for change, said Bob Steele, a scholar on ethics at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank in Florida. A newspaper has two roles, Steele said, when it comes to its community: It gives readers substantive, factual information. It provides context, history, information from outside the paper's geographical region, and acts not only as emotionally-evocative but provocative. "When we write stories, we evoke emotion," Steele said. "Sometimes it might cause fear. Sometimes it might cause anger. Sometimes it might cause frustration. Sometimes it may be panic. "We also write stories that evoke hope. Good journalism not only informs and educates, it gives citizens possibilities for how to respond." Journalists are not cheerleaders or advocates, he added. "But journalists are both conveying substantive information, giving citizens ways to process and reflect upon the information, and . . . communicate with each other as a community." In the case of The Sun, the newspaper has dedicated several reporters and significant space on its pages every day since Mynesha's slaying. "The death of a child, under any circumstances, is unfathomable to most of us," said Steve Lambert, The Sun's editor. "In cases like this, the media are uniquely positioned to raise awareness of the deeper issues that may be at play and in the end, help stir a constructive dialogue, and constructive change. We're not the story, but we can help raise the story to a new, higher level of understanding." What everyone seems to understand, particularly, is that any change that does happen can be enabled by politicians. But for an effort to truly be propelled forward, it's up to people in the community. Tom Dunham, spokesman for New York state Sen. Dean G. Skelos, R-Rockville Centre, author of that state's Megan's Law, the model for those that followed, lauded the mother of the victim in that case for pocketing her pain and striving for something good. "A lot of the credit should go to Maureen Kanka for realizing she could take this horrible tragedy and turn it into something that could protect hundreds of thousands of children around the country," he said. Within two years of Megan's death, every state in the union required sex offenders to register. The federal government also passed a law that would deprive state's grant money if they didn't create a registry. Change, it appears, can indeed happen. And then, perhaps the real question becomes, the one still not answered, who has the heart for it?
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