Denver Post

Message to community: Fix thyself
By Pius Kamau

Thursday, July 17, 2003 - I come to bury Paul, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them.

They have a tendency to come out after a tragedy; a death at the hands of the police is preferable. It happens all the time, all over America. A child is gunned down by another, and no one seems to care. A child is gunned down by police and the black community finds the energy to congregate to lament and to beat its communal breast.

It was repeated again last week after Paul Childs was shot by a Denver police officer. Community leaders who are rarely seen in the community came out to complain about police brutality and to lament about a life taken away too soon.

That the youth was cut down by a police bullet is tragic. The cop should be dealt with according to the provisions of the law. And who can fault the community for coming out in unison in protest?

What I lament is the community's short memory. We meet for a few hours, make a couple of speeches about how terrible the police are, and then disappear behind our barricades. This happens time and again - a knee-jerk reflex to protest, and then we return to our burrows. And when our passions are overwrought, we raze our neighborhoods or kill each other before we go on to whatever we do to survive.

Paul Childs lived a dysfunctional life, in a dysfunctional home where people were threatening each other with knives on a regular basis and where calling 911 became a police taunting game. Often people called 911 there and hung up. There were more than 50 calls in less than two years.

Clearly this is a troubled home, a troubled group of people. No one lives in a vacuum; neighbors know what's happening next door. So where was the community? Why didn't they insert themselves to help this family find its feet and to help the mentally challenged child?

Obviously the neighbors looked at the family and either snickered or gave them a wide berth. What did they expect would eventually happen to this home? Did they suspect it would all end tragically? If so, why didn't they intervene?

As we apportion blame, let's leave a little for the black community, which proves time and again that its main illness is attention deficit disorder. Let me explain.

The killing of a child is a consequence of a number of miscues. In this instance, we had a mentally disturbed child. The community hadn't helped with getting him medical or psychiatric help. One suspects the child had a father. How involved was he with his son? A segment of black males fail their progeny, themselves and the larger community. The presence of a father figure in Childs' life might have made the difference between life and death.

There are social and national trends to be blamed as well: a social services agency that is not always child-friendly; a government that in times of economic difficulty cuts first that which sustains the weakest among us.

We have spent much too much energy blaming white people for black troubles. The problems are instead between black men and black women and the children they procreate. Surely the least we can all do is take care of each other. Our response to the blood being spilled by police - or by other blacks - is a better family life and respect for life.

The answer isn't in rising up after each police killing, but rising up after any killing. It lies in remaining risen. The trick is to channel the community's energy: to be better shepherds of our flock, better and more caring politicians, better fathers of our children, better mothers to our sons. We must never stop teaching our children right from wrong, and the beauty and importance of a good education.

I have been a great admirer of Johnnie Cochran and am always pleased when he swoops down to some new death field. However, I also wish that he and others of his caliber would visit those same places to emphasize the importance of education and faithfulness to spouse and family. It's these same lessons that every adult black man and woman need to learn and pass along to peers, elders and youngsters.

We need to reduce the number of households led by women. Drug use, alcoholism and mental illness need to combated. It's not important how we do it - just that we do. Otherwise, our lament for Paul Childs is nothing more than another moment of wasted anger and passion.