The Numbing Effect of So Many Slayings : Boy’s Killing Should Spur New Anti-Violence Efforts

The dreadful murder of a 14-year-old in Tustin last month, and the arrest of four youths little older than the victim, has again shocked Orange County with an especially graphic incident of violence among teen-agers. The killing seems even more senseless than most: Police say the dispute involved the return of a $2,500 portable sound system.

Carl Dan Claes lived with his grandfather while his mother worked in Northern California. The youth’s grandfather bought him the 6-foot-long music console, used at dance parties to play and record music. Sheriff’s Department investigators said the teen-ager loaned the equipment to a 16-year-old acquaintance, who is charged with shooting the youth when he tried to get it back. Two teens are charged with murder and two with being accessories after the fact in the slaying.

Because of the rarity of such crimes in places like Lemon Heights, an affluent community near Tustin, the killing sparked greater concern among many people than most other killings in Orange County.

The Latino group Los Amigos of Orange County rightly noted that discrepancy when it held separate candlelight vigils one evening for Claes and Julio Sarinana. Sarinana, 17, was killed in a gang-related shooting in Santa Ana the same day Claes’ body was found. Amin David of Los Amigos correctly deplored the tendency to label a gang shooting as “just another slaying.” But the increasing frequency of gang violence in recent years in Orange County unfortunately has contributed to a numbing of the sense of outrage at these deaths. Police said Sarinana was seated in a car, waiting for his father to emerge from a store, when a suspect approached the car, started to talk with the teen-ager and shot him. Police believe the suspect may have been a gang member.

With the year not yet half over, 71 people have already been homicide victims in Orange County. Eleven were 17 years or younger. As one Los Amigos member aptly said, “We need to stand together and say we don’t want any more violence.”

Whatever the results of the investigations and subsequent legal proceedings in the killings of Claes and Sarinana, it is clear that teen-age violence has become a problem in Orange County. Too many youths who should be worrying about school grades, pleasing their parents and planning their futures instead must fear guns and violence.

Claes’ grandfather, Dan George, asked the right question when told that the suspects arrested were juveniles. “What’s going on out there?” he wondered.

The Orange County Probation Department has begun a pilot program to identify youths who are most likely to run afoul of the law and provide them and their families with resources to try to keep them on the straight and narrow. The program is a follow-up to the department’s pioneering seven-year study of juvenile delinquents that found that 8% of the offenders had committed more than half the repeat cases in the juvenile justice system.

The department was candid in saying it was unsure how effective the program would be. Officials are searching for grants to help them coordinate activities of various agencies and individuals, ranging from teachers noting who skipped school, to health care workers being alert to signs of substance abuse, to social workers realizing when there are problems at home.

Those efforts are needed to stop the violence among teen-agers. So is support from everyone in the community to reduce the numbers of guns on the streets.