Dispatch: Rough Times
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Michael Thompson is still here.
He was sitting on Broadway in South-Central L.A. recently, a cigarette behind one ear, a bottle of beer in a paper bag by his side, wearing a clean shirt, white socks and an expression of grim humor.
The 49-year-old Thompson is testament to the enduring nature of the deadly forces documented by The Homicide Report. In 1979, he was shot multiple times in South Los Angeles -- when he was in the same high-risk demographic band as many shooting victims on this list today: black, male, young, living in a tough neighborhood, and criminally involved.
The three men who attacked him with a shotgun were never caught, he says. They shot him so many times he is not sure how many wounds he had. He lost an eye, and was left paralyzed on one side. He woke up in the hospital thinking, ‘Please don’t let me die,’ he said.
He didn’t. He survived, and kept surviving for decades after, peering at the world through his one good eye, using his one good leg and hand, still in pain today from that momentary burst of gunfire 28 years ago.
The media often covers homicide as a statistics story, marking up-and-down jags in the rates. But through the years, the same people have been vulnerable for generations, and the circumstances of L.A. violence have remained fairly constant. Then as now, younger black men are the most vulnerable group.
The late ‘70s and early ‘80s were an especially rough time for men such as Thompson -- much like today. There were 83 deaths per 100,000 black men age 18 to 24 in 1980, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The comparable figure for deaths among the same group today is 78 -- a little bit improved, but not by much.
Thompson says that as a young man he was involved in gangs. He insists, as many men his age do, that back then the fighting was done with fists, not guns, and that the gang culture was less indiscriminately violent, although the numbers suggest otherwise. He says he has made mistakes. ‘I shoulda got an education,’ he said. But he is a survivor -- in some ways, ‘stronger than most people out here,’ he said.
For every person who lands on The Homicide Report, several more people are wounded by gunfire and survive, often maimed for life. Years, even decades, after the shootings have ceased to get any attention from the news, or from police, these victims are still here, getting by as best they can. On the streets, they co-exist with the new victims of the same old problem. Thompson, who survives on a disability check -- enough to eat, not enough to rent a place to live, he says -- said his faith in God gets him through. Then he stares at the street. ‘It’s rough out here,’ he said.