Can't bear it: It's tough to imagine any future for

Finally We Care

Bullets are now flying uncomfortably close to home.

by Kia Gregory

This just in.

Gun violence in Philadelphia is out of control.

Forget Nashay Little. Forget Tykeem Law. Forget that grandma sitting on the step. Forget that guy standing in his bedroom getting dressed for work. Forget the 11 people murdered that one weekend. Forget the 344 and counting killed so far this year. Forget Dateline and CNN. Forget the City of Brotherly Love turned murder capital renamed Killadelphia.

Apparently the siege started last week when gun violence escaped from its normal black-on-black, not-in-my-neighborhood, why-should-I-give-a-damn isolation into something unimaginable, something that gets cops shot and endangers the sanctity of the island of Center City.

It started last Sunday around 2 a.m., closing time, at University City nightclub Koko Bongo, where hundreds poured into the street, and cops maintained crowd control.

At some point 21-year-old Lamarr Bembry pulled out his 9 mm and opened fire on police officers.

“There is no motive other than they didn’t want to move out of the street,” says police spokesperson Lt. Frank Vanore of Bembry and his friends.

One bullet hit police officer Sandra Van Hinkle, on the job 10 years, in the leg. Hinkle would be the first of three Philadelphia police officers shot in four days.

A man sitting in his car was caught in the crossfire. He was shot in the shoulder and face.

Police shot Bembry once in the chest. He was pronounced dead around 4 a.m.

This wasn’t Bembry’s first clash with cops and guns.

About two years ago, after getting a call about a man with a gun, two police officers observed, stopped and frisked Bembry at a Center City jewelry store. He had a loaded .38 in his front pants pocket.

Bembry, a former convict, was arrested and charged with two felonies and a misdemeanor for carrying a firearm without a license.

Seven months later, after a series of trial motions, Bembry pleaded guilty. Nine months later he was sentenced to six to 23 months of house arrest, 20 hours of community service, four years of probation and court costs of $237. Unemployed, he was ordered to maintain employment. He was also ordered to surrender his firearm and to never own another.

Back in 2005 I sat in the city’s newly touted gun court, shocked by the number of defendants given probation over jail time.

Bootlegging movies carries stiffer penalties.

“If they give them stiffer sentences, it would be a deterrent,” says Lt. Vanore of those caught with illegal guns. “We need stiffer penalties.”

Was Bembry rehabable or incorrigible? We’ll never know. But something in his life’s path clearly failed, and it wasn’t a police policy of stop-and-frisk, which, frustratingly, critics have a boogieman fear of that runs deeper than the real-life nightmare of mounting bloodshed.

And if you get convicted of carrying an illegal gun, the sentence should be you go to jail, directly to jail, do not pass parole, do not collect community service.

As the shooter sped down Sansom Street, officer Mario Santiago gave chase. The shooter jumped out of his car around 22nd, shot Santiago in the shoulder, ran down the street, jumped into the Schuylkill River and drowned.

Of the three people he shot, two remain in critical condition.

The next morning there was palpable fear and outrage in Center City, and I couldn’t help but think sardonically: So you finally noticed. Welcome to Killadelphia, where on average one person is murdered and five people are shot every single day.

Several people even wondered if crime was rising in Center City. Lily white, yuppie-fied, hipster-filled Center City. I couldn’t help but think, here’s hoping. Maybe then we’d collectively give a damn.

We didn’t when Nashay Little got shot or Tykeem Law or that grandma sitting on the step or that guy standing in his bedroom getting dressed for work or those 11 people murdered that April weekend or the 344 people murdered and counting so far this year.

We know who’s being largely affected by gun violence (poor and working-class black people) and where (neglected black neighborhoods). We know what meaningful jobs, quality education, Head Start, after-school programs, economic development, effective law enforcement and gun reform will do. We’ve just never had the collective will.

Our apathy to date is as senseless as the violence itself, and is perhaps the saddest tragedy of all.

The gunman spun around and shot Cassidy in the head. The married father of three and 25-year police veteran died the next morning.

The day before, when asked about the recent spate of police shootings, a weary police commissioner Sylvester Johnson—maybe as a slight at himself, the mayor, state legislators, all of us—said, “Somebody’s got to realize we’ve got a gun problem in this city.”

Maybe now we finally will.