What kind of mother could give her son to a convicted molester for care? A careless, cruel and self-absorbed one. Shanda Harris is one. She left her 11-year-old son, Irvin, in Melvin Jones? care, knowing his background. Jones, 53, killed Irvin in 2006 and was sentenced in September 2007 to 50 years in prison. Shanda Harris, 42, will not serve any prison time. The case will stand out as particularly senseless for all time.
2007 saw 282 murders that make no sense ? the most since 1999.
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It also saw a string of highly publicized attacks on Maryland Transit Authority buses, where onlookers and drivers often did their best to look away rather than stop the violence.
City State?s Attorney Patricia Jessamy wants more money for witness assistance to encourage those who see crimes to come forward. Her office receives about $540,000, mostly from the city, to assist those who feel intimidated or threatened. More money may help a few people, but it is an empty promise without a major cultural shift in the city. That means a pledge from each of us to decry crime and criminals instead of accepting them as normal. Witnesses aren?t the only people who are responsible for policing criminals; what about juries who refuse to convict out of fear of the accused or distrust of police, often the main witnesses in criminal trials, and those who turn a blind eye to rampant crime or child neglect?
Changing the culture starts from the bottom up. It needs parents who teach their children to give up seats on the bus to the elderly and to the pregnant and riders and bus drivers who enforce those rules. To paraphrase a letter writer last week ? “Imagine 20 people on the same bus standing up and saying ?Be quiet, you punks,? ” to unruly young people.
It also takes more police living in the neighborhoods they patrol and earning the trust of residents, and it takes a strong relationship between the prosecutor?s office and the police department. If they don?t trust each other, why should jurors trust what either group says? And it takes the extra-special courage of witnesses who declare the truth in front of people who could kill them; and jurors whose rulings could also put them in danger. Little by little, it can happen. We know this is no easy task. As an Examiner report showed, only half of the murder cases in the past 10 years have been closed ? and only half of the closed cases have ended in prison terms of 10 or more years. With those statistics, wouldn?t you be afraid to testify or to be a juror?
But it can be done. Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of the bus, spurring the end of segregation despite all odds. The residents of Baltimore City must not accept injustice either ? unless we are willing to accept the deaths of more Irvin Harrises.
