One of the treasures of Berkeley life is you can walk anywhere in the town, from South side of Berkeley to it's most northern borders is only an hour's walk at a good clip. All the more reason to feel the borders encroachment as a shooting of Ken Warren on Shattuck Avenue, blocks from the Berkeley Bowl and not even a block from the large highly active Ashby/Shattuck intersection.
7 o'clock two days ago just two blocks from my home, as cars and people coming home from work or on their way to BART or local stores or coffee shops were in the presence of the shooting of Ken Warren, nephew of Don Warren, who worked at the Barbershop that has held its business there over 40 years. Father of 5, brother to 6 siblings and well known to his community and friends, Ken had closed the barbershop and was going to the next door apartment at the top of the stairs where friends awaited him for a televised basketball game, when two young black youths came up the stairs and unloaded more than the 40 shells that were found from their handguns into Ken.
Terrified, we're all looking for answers when it's in another city or in another country, but two blocks away there is the imperative to find answers to what is the base cause for this tragedy and the others like it that happen all too often. We want to find the answers that have us feel good about walking down the streets with our families. Gangs and drugs are the first place we look. But the facts do not bare out the attributions we want to make to distance ourselves from the senseless violence. Where we can find some answers about the incidence of young black youths and adults shooting other young black youths and adults is in the Black Homicide Victimization in the US Analysis 0f 2009 Homicides. The facts of that report are that it is access to handguns that is the cause of shootings.
The Report goes on to state that Black victims are 17.9% of 100,000 as opposed to White victims rate of 2.9% per 100,000. Profound as those numbers are, the report goes further to state that 71% of the shootings are not related to any other crime, that 54% are based on a personal argument between the victim and the offender. Only 13% are gang related. The common factor, the significant and distinct factor to the shootings, according to this report, is access to handguns. Their recommendation is to focus on reducing access and exposure to firearms.
South Berkeley has gone through a strong gentrification period since 2000; we arrived in '97 and witnessed the increase in real estate value on our street alone accounting sales and for new neighbors on 10 of the 12 residences. But South Berkeley has been considered in recent years as again on the fringe, close to North Oakland borders, where reports of gang activity spilling over to South Berkeley was the discussion two years ago when a young man was gunned down at Emerson and Adeline coming home with his fiancé at 2 am. The Young Black males with the gun carrying stopped the couple and were angry that they had no money and shot Fito. http://www.examiner.com/community-in-san-francisco/berkeley-neighborhood-suffers-loss-of-fito
There were a few community meetings with the new Police Chief. Students who were friends of Fito still have a monument there on the streets where Fito was killed that they refresh from time to time. Reducing the opportunity for encountering violence was part of the discussion led by the Police. Police in Oakland and Berkeley working more closely together was another outcome.
Now the brazenness of the shooting has struck an alarm, but the real action that should take place is to have the local tragedy be seen for what it is: a National Crisis that needs to be responded to by having access to firearms and guns be stopped. It's easy to consider the shootings a Richmond problem, Oakland problem or South Berkeley problem, that is what keeps the problem a problem unsolved. But in truth, anyone who happened to be passing by Shattuck Avenue, a through street that runs all the way from South to North and is often used instead of the freeway, might have been involved in the tragedy of the shooting that happened to Ken Warren.
Reducing access and exposure to the use of guns is one part of the equation citizens can take on and produce measures that restrict or eliminate personal firearms. But at the core, what could really make a difference in the incidence of the young black males who throw their own lives under the bus in taking up a firearm is to provide more options for finding a place in society. Most often, they represent the 51% who drop out of high school. No education, no job training, no job cycle begins there in an already punishing economic period of time.
It may be time to recognize that the hope of their future is inextricably attached to our own. Getting young black males into job training, apprenticing or being given city jobs to take up the conditions of the roads and the high cost of resources that help or improve local cities, those are some answers. Those are some actions that in addition to getting the guns off the street offer a future of hope not just for the offenders but for those of us who want to walk around our cities with a sense of safety.
The family that lost Ken, the friends who lost Ken know that if it can happen to him-the family man, the person well known by many as hardworking and dedicated to his family, then it can happen to anyone. Berkeley has had the problems of the country show up at their doorsteps that are not just their problem, but the nation's problem, and the people of Berkeley have put down the easy answers and moved in on the problem to find solutions. Now is the time for that to happen again. In recognition this is not a Berkeley problem, not a California problem, but a problem our nation must address and take action to provide options that are not visible to those who take up the guns.
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