Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 4, 1995 TAG: 9501070074
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In a matter of minutes, if not seconds, in a single apartment, Roanoke had more killings before 1995 was four hours old than it had in all of 1994. The victims' families and friends grieve most intensely, of course, but the killings shocked a city as well.
Last year, Roanoke's first homicide did not occur until September. By the end of the year, there had been only four - one of which is suspected to have occurred elsewhere but is officially counted in Roanoke, where the victim's body was found.
That was four too many, just as now there have been five too many in 1995. Still, the '94 figure was far below the double-figure numbers of murders typically reported in Roanoke in recent years, and brought the city a bit of favorable attention nationally.
All along, law-enforcement authorities had cited just plain good luck as one reason for last year's low homicide rate, a point that the New Year's Day slayings have tragically reinforced.
Even so, police policy and techniques seem to have made a difference. The move toward community policing in high-crime neighborhoods, for example, probably helped bring an end (in '94 anyway) to the "routine" cases of young men killing other young men over often-trivial disagreements.
What's left is the bizarre. The mass slayings, like the family of four killed last year in their home in Vinton - also a big shock to the valley - or the five people shot while partying into the wee hours on New Year's Day. The mentally impaired mother suspected of drowning her small child. The woman killed allegedly by two houseguests who turned out to be ex-convicts from West Virginia.
Answers for preventing killings such as those are hazier.
Obviously, the existence of capital punishment failed to stop any of the crimes. Longer prison sentences in another state might have prevented one of last year's Roanoke slayings. But that's arguable, and a point easier to make in hindsight than foresight. So, too, is the point that another of Roanoke's killings might have been prevented by better evaluation of a family situation by social-services and family-court officials.
Easy access to guns continues to be the source of many an American tragedy, and the story in Roanoke on New Year's Day could prove a classic contributor to the genre. Alcohol, an argument - and what might have ended with a broken nose instead ends, because guns entered the argument, with five people dead and a neighbor facing capital-murder charges.
Similarly, American society is accursed by easy acceptance of violence as the solution to problems - a notion purveyed by the vehicles of mass-audience entertainment, and reflected in the despicable abortion-clinic shootings of recent days and months.
Roanoke enjoyed a low-murder 1994. The goal of a no-homicide 1995 was lost within hours of the New Year, but the goal can still be a no-murder 1995 hereafter.
Keywords:
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by CNB