FIRST-PERSON: Turns Out, Real Newspapermen Do Cry Sometimes. At Least This One Does.
I Cry For Brooklyn Homes, A Community of Poor People of Color Abandoned By Baltimore City Police Despite Numerous Ominous Warnings Of Imminent Violence. I Cry for My Hometown. I Pray for My Hometown.
Originally Published Tuesday, July 4, 2023, 4 a.m.
In my nearly four decades as a journalist, I have covered more than a hundred homicides and four mass shootings.
It never gets easier.
Instead, it gets harder.
At 2 a.m. Monday, I am sitting in a living room at Brooklyn Homes public housing complex in South Baltimore and talking to an elementary school teacher and her husband, a laid-off former warehouse worker, and to their children, two 10-year-old boys and a 14-year-old girl. The kids had slept, but then woke again.
The mom and dad tell me they need to leave Brooklyn and Baltimore forever.
And never look back.
They say it doesn’t matter where they go — Philly, Wilmington, Richmond, Boise, LA, anywhere but here, because, they say, they want no more reminders of this horrible crime and this crime scene just outside their door. It would be unthinkable for them to allow their children to stay here, they tell me.
Not after what they witnessed just after 12:30 Sunday morning, when gunfire left a mother’s 18-year-old “Angel” dead on the ground and the blaze of bullets wounded a 20-year-old man, who died in the hospital soon after, and 28 others, 23 of them teens, along with three women and two men, ages 20 to 31.
Never again, the mother and father tell me.
They will never return to this crime scene or this scarred community or this city.
Ever.
I stumble back out into the street and duck behind a car so the cops and the smattering of locals can’t see me.
Then I sit on a curb and I cry torrents of tears and look to the heavens and speak to God in terms not resembling prayer as most know it.
I think he’s crying for Brooklyn tonight too.
I cry for the people of Brooklyn Homes, abandoned by the Baltimore Police Department, which should have responded to repeated warning signs of serious violence about to erupt by dispatching dozens or scores of officers immediately, but instead, did nothing resembling effective policing.
The Baltimore Police Department betrayed the people of Brooklyn Homes.
Two of them died and 28 others suffered gunshot wounds as a direct result.
I cry for Brooklyn.
I cry for Baltimore.
I cry for us all.
But early Monday morning in Brooklyn — not the famous one, but the newly infamous one, our Brooklyn, in my hometown — I cry for just a few minutes.
Then I dry my tears with a crumbled 7-11 napkin, open my reporter’s notepad and get back to work. After all, if I give in to emotions on a big story, I become the journalistic equivalent of a surgeon whose hands shake.
So now I'll try to somehow take you there to Brooklyn Homes, and if I can help you see the world from those streets and stoops and living rooms, and through the eyes of children and a mother and a dad, and all who shed tears for the dead and the wounded, then maybe I’ve done my job.
We are all Brooklynites tonight.
We are all Baltimoreans tonight.
“MY BABY!!! Worst day of my life! I cannot do life without her. I NEED HER!! Why would they do this to a perfect angel? I love you so much, baby. I didn’t get there fast enough. God this is a mistake!!! Please!!.” — Facebook post, Krystal Gonzalez, mother of 18-year-old Aaliyah Gonzalez, killed at Brooklyn Homes
During the annual celebration of Brooklyn Day, toddlers and babies (with their young mothers holding them) took pony rides. Rappers rapped, DJs spun discs and teenagers kissed in alleyways. Roughly 900 people celebrated in the streets. They sang and danced, held hands and hugged and shared stories, feasted on barbecue chicken and ribs and burgers and hotdogs, just as they had for the first 26 annual Brooklyn Day celebrations, none marred by violence.
Then around 12:30 a.m. Sunday, the music suddenly died, replaced by the awful sounds of gunfire and screams.
Everybody ran for their lives, some praying desperate prayers that the bullets would not find them or their kin.
But nobody fully escaped those bullets.
They pierced the heart and soul of these people, the good people of Brooklyn, of Baltimore, of all of us, for they, the people of Brooklyn Homes, they are us and we are them, but for grace and circumstance.
If you believe, maybe say a prayer, or spare a thought tonight for Brooklyn, for Baltimore, our hometown, for an end to the madness, for light to somehow triumph over darkness, hope over despair, faith over doubt, love over hate, life over death.
May we never become so numbed by the relentless barrage of bloodletting — “and every day, the paper boy brings more” — to the point that we accept this as the norm.
When I looked into the bloodshot eyes of some of those little kids, I thought of my sons, Joseph and Paul, when they were little. I pictured them at a big celebration, a festival, a fair, a carnival maybe, and then, bullets flying, and I could see them, in my mind’s eye, crying like I’ve never seen them cry and hear them wailing like I’ve never heard them wail.
I know I would never forget seeing that anguish in their faces and hearing those desperate cries, but more importantly, they would never forget, for those terrible moments would be seared into their consciousnesses all their days.
And I know that for those little kids in Brooklyn, still up so late this one night of the year, those bullets stole away a part of the innocence of childhood forever, the wonder and magic of a summer’s night filled with laughter and love, hope and life and possibilities that seemed eternal.
We cannot, we must not just sigh and then forget it, because odds are, tomorrow or the next day will bring another murder to our hometown, and within just three or four days, many others will be wounded, but rarely make the papers or the websites or the TV news.
Often the names of homicide victims don’t even make the cut anymore, and that used to be unthinkable. If the police provide a name of the victim, you publish, post or air the name of the human being who lost his or her life to violence.
Back then anyway.
No, nobody here fully escaped the violence that ended Brooklyn Day, as the locals knew and loved it, the annual ritual.
None of us escaped.
Enough.
Enough cliches spoken from the same old tired script of thoughts and prayers and senseless violence (as opposed to the sensible kind) to feed the sound bites for the news and 'round the clock on cable if there’s enough blood and anguish, misery and grief and wailing to get national play, or here, to serve as a prominent quote that will be dutifully published in the dailies and on the web.
Enough makeshift memorials and balloons and teddy bears and tears.
Enough hashtags.
Enough.
No, it doesn’t get easier, and it should not get easier, ever.
It gets harder.
I really need an anal copy editor now, but I don’t have that luxury, so I’m gonna have a good cry and cuss out God a little bit too.
I think he can handle it.
But then I’ll try to find it inside of me once more to muster the faith to believe in the Psalm that says tears are prayers too.
This is my hometown.
Our hometown.
I will love it forever.
And tonight, it breaks my heart into a million little pieces.
I guess real newspapermen do cry, after all.
At least this one does.
Goodnight, Brooklyn.
Goodnight, Baltimore.
Damn, you, my hometown, you make me hurt so bad.
But still, I love you.
And to you, the God of my faith, sorry about cussing you out and all.
You know, to forgive is divine, right?
I need a kicker quote too.
So how about this one?
“Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.”
