Chapter
one
I’m reading
Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon. Simon is a reporter who
spent a year observing a Baltimore homicide unit, which served as the basis for
this book, and HBO’s The Wire.
Two weeks ago, if you asked me what police
do, I’d say something along the lines of, “They run after bad guys… they have
guns, sirens…car chases?”
My experience with police officers is (I
suppose thankfully) limited.
“Television has given us the myth of the
raging pursuit, the high-speed chase, but in truth there is no such thing: if
there were, God knows the Cavalier would throw a rod after a dozen blocks…”
Simon, page 16.
The detectives, at least for the first
chapter, don’t fight people. They yell, they swab, or “NEUTRON,” but that’s the
extent of it. They visit crime scenes, do general sleuthing, interrogate people, and mundane office work.
Simon is able to do what we’re taught in school, show—don’t tell.
“Jay Landsman, of the sidelong smile and
pockmarked face, who tells the mothers of wanted men that all the commotion is
nothing to be upset about, just a routine murder warrant. Landsman, who leaves
empty liquor bottles in the other sergeants’ desks and never fails to turn out
the men’s room light when a ranking officer is indisposed,” page 2.
Simon doesn’t have to say that Landsman is
a jerk. We get it. Part of this is good story telling,
knowing what details matter. The other part is that Simon was actively involved
in the story. If he didn’t know Landsman personally, he wouldn't know those details. Being present improves story telling.
We’ve learned that it’s usually best
to avoid jargon. In Homicide, it works. The book reads like it could be
fiction, Simon tells the story through the lens of the characters.
However, I do sort of wish there was more
of an explanation for some of the slang. I had to look up yo/yos, all I could
find was an Urban Dictionary (always a credible source) entry.
I appreciate how slang lends to the voice
of characters, but at times it is confusing.
Murders that matter
About three pages in, all I could think about is how little people seem to care about death. It continued throughout the chapter, but it wasn’t just the detectives.
“Underneath this towering pyramid of
authority squats the homicide detective, laboring in anonymity over some
bludgeoned prostitute or shot-to-shit narcotics trafficker until one day the
phone bleats twice and the body on the ground is that of an eleven-year-old
girl, an all-city athlete, a retired priest, or some out-of-state tourist who
wandered into the projects with a Nikon around his neck. Red balls. Murders
that matter,” page 20.
The deaths people care about are less
frequent, but the media gives them coverage. Why are some deaths more important
than others?
The deaths are different because the
victims are not necessarily people living in
poverty, or addicted to drugs.
As I got further through the chapter I
realized that the detectives care, at least to an extent, but it's their
job, they’re used to it. Murders that matter are only different because other
people care.
Empathy
“For each body, he gives what he can afford
to give and no more. He carefully measures out the required amount of energy
and emotion, closes the file and moves on to the next call. And even after
years of calls and bodies and crime scenes and interrogations, a good detective
still answers the phone with the stubborn, unyielding belief that if he does
his job, the truth is always knowable. A homicide detective endures,” page 22.
The first day of journalism class this year,
we talked about the qualities a journalist should have. I’ve been thinking about empathy
a lot since then. As a journalist, should you invest yourself in people’s (sometimes
tragic) stories? Is empathy a good quality to have? Does it help people open up?
I’m still not sure, but I was reminded of our discussion by the quote from page 22. I’m aware that police work and journalism
are different, but they are sometimes intertwined.
I still don’t know what my opinion on the
matter is, let me know what you think?
