Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 17, 1993 TAG: 9309170097
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICHARD COLE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: MIAMI LENGTH: Medium
Harvey's stepfather didn't appear on "Oprah." His mother wasn't invited to the governor's mansion. No European newspaper wrote an indignant headline. Local reporters never even mentioned him. No reward was offered.
Harvey, 33, took a bullet in the chest late Saturday. He died in the center of Pierce Street, among neat, single-family homes in the black, middle-class Miami suburb of Richmond Heights.
"We were advised by a passerby that a body was lying in a pool of blood," Metro-Dade police spokeswoman Lizette Williams said after leafing through reports to find the case. "We have no subject information, no clue as to the motive. We have no suspect."
In Florida, as across the United States, many more Michael Harveys die than foreign tourists.
Last year, according to Linda Harless, a statistician at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the state recorded 1,191 murders. Twenty-two of the victims were nonresidents. In 1991, when 1,276 people were killed, 30 came from outside Florida. In 1990, 29 of that year's 1,387 murder victims were non-Floridians.
Such imbalance in the numbers and resultant media attention also caught the eye of New York Times columnist Russell Baker, who wrote in editions published the day Harvey died:
"It's a sign of the American decline that eight tourists murdered in Florida capture national headlines when the thousands and thousands of Americans routinely murdered cause such little splash. It reverses the old joke about American narcissism (`Two Americans Injured as Asia Earthquake Kills 200,000'). When it comes to murder, it's now Americans who don't matter."
Thursday, Harvey's stepfather, telephone company employee James Latham, buried his stepson after a funeral service at Covenant Baptist Church in Florida City.
Earlier, as he repaired hurricane damage to windows at his home, where Harvey also lived, Latham said he didn't want to talk about his stepson's murder or provide any details about his life. It pains Harvey's mother, he says.
He says he can understand why the killings of German and British visitors get more attention - but then the bitterness creeps in, and his eyes flash.
"I've lived in Miami since 1963. I know how it works," Latham says. "This country isn't geared toward human beings. It's geared toward only one thing - m-o-n-e-y."
Police feel the inequity just as deeply, says Detective Don Blocker of Metro-Dade police. He comes from a rural Georgia town where a police siren would send the entire population scurrying to see what happened. In Dade County, he finds, people don't even turn their heads.
"We've gotten so callous here, we don't pay any attention until it's something extraordinary," says Blocker. "Sometimes it's the reaction of people from outside, sometimes it's because of public pressure - then we'll form a task force."
His department is tracking a serial rapist in the Liberty City area who attacks schoolgirls, he noted. They have publicly identified a suspect but cannot find him, and over the weekend he struck again, this time kidnapping a little boy who was later released.
The detective is frustrated by the community's indifference.
"There hasn't been a reward raised. There hasn't been any ruckus," he says. "It's a vivid example. Nobody's paying attention."
by CNB