[FORUM] Petty cruelties
Oct. 26th, 2008 01:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldToronto's 2005 Boxing Day shooting, when members of two rival gangs had a shoot out in downtown Toronto next to the Eaton Centre, injuring six people and killing 15 year old student Jane Creba, has started. (For pictures of the scene of the shooting, go to photographer Raymond Chow's photo set.) The memorials of cards and flowers and stuffed animals piled up in front of the store where she was shot through the shoulder and neck lasted for a couple of weeks, perhaps in part because Yonge and Dunas is such a visible intersection, someplace most people have visited at one point or another (or another ...) in their lives. I myself had toyed with the idea of heading down there that day to check out CDs sales before I decided that I really should finish inscribing the last of my New Year's Day cards.
First, I'd like to express the hope that if the accused are guilty that they'll get at least a little bit of what they gave out.
Second, I'd like to question Toronto Star columnist Rosie DiManno's take on the way that some people at the scene responded to Creba's death.
DiManno's case for the cruelty in passing of our era strikes me as tendentious: Gossip long predates the Internet and people have managed to be cruel to each other even without cellphone cameras.
That said, might she have a point, if not about the ways that people can be cruel even in passing and then with the speed with which cruelty's effects can be propagated? Discuss.
First, I'd like to express the hope that if the accused are guilty that they'll get at least a little bit of what they gave out.
Second, I'd like to question Toronto Star columnist Rosie DiManno's take on the way that some people at the scene responded to Creba's death.
There's no way of knowing how many people have Jane Creba dying as their screen saver.
If that sounds totally appalling, it's all in keeping with a current culture of voyeurism and nihilism--a disconnect from decency that, in its broader sense, is what got the pretty 15-year-old killed: the not caring about consequences, the reality TV shamelessness, the at-your-fingertips guns and cellphone cameras.
[. . .]
Const. Angela Kahnt was in her cruiser two blocks away when the radio squawked about shots fired in the area of Yonge and Elm Sts. In fact, she and her partner actually heard the fusillade as it was occurring. Burning rubber to reach the scene, Kahnt jumped out of the vehicle and sprinted the last stretch because it was faster than negotiating the press of people.
"There were people fleeing, people lying on the ground,'' Kahnt told court yesterday, at the murder trial of a 20-year-old who can't be named because he was a minor at the time of the incident.
"They were lying behind the concrete planters, behind garbage bins. I couldn't tell you how many, more than 50 or 60. It was unbelievable."
And, even now, there's incredulity and disgust in her voice: "There was a female who appeared to have been shot. Somebody was working on her. And there were young kids trying to take pictures of the female ... with their cell phones."
DiManno's case for the cruelty in passing of our era strikes me as tendentious: Gossip long predates the Internet and people have managed to be cruel to each other even without cellphone cameras.
That said, might she have a point, if not about the ways that people can be cruel even in passing and then with the speed with which cruelty's effects can be propagated? Discuss.
