Scream Out in Anger Over Every Gang Murder

I read “Behind Swift LAPD Action, a Moral Issue” (April 22) with mixed emotions. As a mother who lost her son to gang violence just five short months ago, my pain is still very raw. Our son Gregg and his best friend Naz were murdered in cold blood by gang members presumed to be out meeting their initiation quotas. My son and his friend had no gang affiliation and, very much like Joey Swift, had their whole lives ahead of them. Our son was only 20, soon to be 21, his big milestone -- never to be experienced.

I and a handful of other mothers who have lost their children in the same manner were present at the press conference where Lorri Arbuckle, Joey’s mom, spoke of the heinous crime that took her child’s life. I saw the pain in her eyes and felt the pain in her heart.

While I agree with some of the comments in the article -- stating that the homicides of gang members who have lost their lives should also be looked into -- I believe I do so for different reasons. I want those evildoers found, and I want them punished to the fullest extent of the law. I want them off the streets so that they can no longer “at a whim” silence the voices of people who are kind and decent. And when we do incarcerate them, I don’t believe we should reward them by offering them cable TV and continued education at our expense.

Perhaps the best way to rehabilitate them is to have them spend the rest of their lives indebted to the families whose child they stole. To have them look into the empty eyes of the mother, father, sister or brother of the one they killed for no rhyme or reason. That being said, victims of homicide do deserve justice, and each case should be handled with dignity for the person lost (and his or her loved ones), regardless of his or her age, ethnicity, political clout or address. We as a society must meet this epidemic seriously, as seriously as we take the threats of terrorists who come to the U.S. to do us great harm. We have raced across the globe in the name of peace; why haven’t we raced across our own nation’s backyards to eliminate the urban war terrorists, a.k.a. gangs, here at home?

Each time you read about another whose life has been extinguished by gang violence, remember that that person had goals, dreams and a life. They are people, sons and daughters, and not statistics, not numbers. Communities must come together. All people must stand side by side against this plague. Parents must talk with their children at early ages; they must stay involved in their children’s activities throughout their adolescence, know where they are at all times, who their friends are and what they are doing. Neighbors must take on the “village effect,” watching out for their neighbors’ children as if they were their own.

Each time someone is killed we should all be appalled and scream out in anger: Stop the violence! We have become a nation of murder desensitization; it happens so frequently now that we are tuning out and no longer responding to something so against our human nature. Yes, I still believe that we are all capable of love and compassion. It’s just a little hard for me to find the compassion part for the murderer of my son.

Judy Gibson

Mother of Gregg W. Gibson II

Mission Viejo