New Town, Same Old Sad Song

They came to City Hall wearing stern expressions and lapel ribbons. Their faces were masks of grief and anger. The white ribbons were meant to represent peace. They quickly filled the 75 seats in the circular council chambers. Then an equal number squeezed together, shoulder to shoulder, in the foyer, resigned to listening through a doorway. The last to arrive could only stand outside in the cold or go home. They stood.

Something had happened. Something that was not supposed to happen in their town, not in Visalia. A community of 90,000, located 40 miles south of Fresno, Visalia was supposed to be different. Visalia had its farmers, and its minor league baseball, and its river, and its shady neighborhoods, and its nearby Sequoia forests. Visalia, they told themselves, had “friendly people.” Visalia had a “family atmosphere.”

What had happened was this. A 35-year-old optician, a father of two, was waiting at a traffic signal at 5 p.m. last Thursday. Two sets of rival gang members--teen-agers--spotted one another at the intersection. Guns came out. Shooting started. Caught in a cross-fire, Kelly Scott was struck twice in the head. He died a day later, the first innocent bystander to be claimed by gang violence in Visalia.

After shock, came anger. After anger, resolve. “When you read about this happening in Los Angeles and Fresno, that’s one thing,” one resident told the newspaper. “But when it happens right here at Ben Maddox and Houston, that’s something else again.” And now, on Monday night--six hours after the burial--the people of Visalia had gathered to discuss what might stop this new thing loose in their town.

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Consequences, said the police chief, an earnest young man who had come to the meeting in his dress uniform, carrying a file of crime statistics. “There have to be consequences.” His officers could catch more gang members, and juvenile delinquents, and car thieves, but there would be no place to hold them. As it was now, most stayed in jail just long enough to be booked and released. “No consequences,” the chief said.

Compassion, said a council member. “We keep turning our backs on these youths. . . . That is not how we do things in Visalia. In Visalia, we reach out and touch and care.”

Punishment, thundered the Visalia representative to the county board. “Put these little people down in a hole, and let them stay in a hole. No television. No radio. No weightlifting. Maybe even no hot meals.”

A gang summit, said another council member. Economics, said an old-timer, a Dust Bowl refugee: There simply aren’t enough good-paying jobs for young people. “Let ‘em join the Army,” came a hiss from the crowd. What about community programs? someone asked. Church volunteers? After-school activities, like wood-working? Spanking, suggested a mother: “I love my children, but when I bring out that belt and snap it, they do what I tell them.”

Elect more conservatives, said the mayor, gnawing on a cigar. Zero tolerance, said the high school teacher. Better communication, said the student. Better fathers, said the plumber.

Hello, said the man from Visalia’s north side, a neighborhood where gangs and gunfire are not exactly novel. “When I was growing up,” he said, “there were killings and shootings and stabbings all the time. It was no big deal. As long as it was on the north side, the attitude was: Let them keep killing each other. No big deal. Now you see. Crime is going to travel. Crime always travels.”

*

In the end, it sounded depressingly familiar. This could have been Los Angeles, after the college student was killed on a Westwood corner a decade ago. Or Fresno, after the man was shot down at the shopping mall a few years back. Or Pasadena, after the three teen-age trick-or-treaters were ambushed by gangbangers.

Always the same anger. The same expressions of resolve. The same ideas. And always, it would seem, the same sad fade to resignation, acceptance. Amazing what we can learn to tolerate. Of course, Visalia is not that far along yet. The police chief told how, after the killing, he had called a colleague in Los Angeles, seeking guidance.

“He told me, ‘Just get used to it. It’s part of the big world. Accept it.’ Well,” the chief said, “I refuse to accept it.”

He urged the townspeople not to “roll over,” to make a stand. They seemed to believe they could. Visalia, they said, would be different. Visalia, they said, “was where we will turn this around.” That is what they told themselves, as they headed into the night, down streets that seemed not quite so friendly and familiar as they had just a few days before.