This guy has got the Cleveland area up in arms, but the rest of the US gets a "meh". So far he's copped to 6 murders over the years.

The hallmarks so far:
1- He's a registered 'sex offender'. And has to contact his parole officer every 90 days.
2- He's black.
3- All of his victims (discovered so far) were black.
4- He lived in a majorly poor part of town. Ditto his victims.

This offends me rather deeply. These six victims were someone's daughter, mother, sister, wife, girlfriend. They're still being identified. The citizens are being begged to 'report missing persons'.

Don't people care enough ? Or do I live next to a combat zone that is just dead tired and not willing to give a crap any more ?

It's all very sad.

Very sad indeed. That this story gets less coverage than "balloon boy" speaks to indifference about poor people, if not black people.

The neighbors knew something was very wrong in that house and didn't report anything. I was struck that at least some thought, "what difference would it have made?" Cleveland is so broke I guess they figured nobody would bother to show up and investigate.

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[picasaweb.google.com] [www.flickr.com]

No shortage of whacko murders here lately, just local.
A couple involve little kids.
News probaby has little time for the out of town murder news.

Awful lot of cars driving into buildings/houses this week, too, for some reason.

I think it might be a factor of the deplorable "stop snitchin" policy that rappers have promoted.

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"FUNDIT"

I personally feel that local murders are a local news story. The fact that murders get picked up and publicized all over the country always sort of irks me. I hate it when the teaser is something like "man kills three and then self", and when the commercials are over you find out it happened 1,500 miles away. Sorry, but that is still local news to me regardless of how heinous.

Anyhow, even if you do think it's appropriate for the media to report every murder in the country regardless of how far away, it takes a pretty blonde girl to make national headlines. We all know that.

And I have to agree with billb in that we, too, have enough local murders without having to go out looking for them.

I hope I don't sound like I don't care about the victims. I know it's a tragedy and I'm very sorry to hear about it.

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The big crime story here (SF Bay Area) at the moment is apparently a "gang rape" of a girl at a local high school. I did not really know it was the "Big Story" until a few days into it. That's how much attention I pay to this kind of stuff anymore.

I recognize that these crimes are heinous and horrific, but -- sad to say -- I am probably hopelessly desensitized to much of it.

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"Mind your wants, cuz there's someone that wants your mind."

Well Dahmer was originally from Cleveland, so the bar was set fairly high.

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Ssshhh!!! We're busy following a cutie like Somer Thomson 24/7!

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The Poochie!

When I lived in Philly, I remember this story, which was then eclipsed by this story, which was subsequently completely overshadowed by Dahmer.

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"Mind your wants, cuz there's someone that wants your mind."

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Seacrest
The big crime story here (SF Bay Area) at the moment is apparently a "gang rape" of a girl at a local high school. I did not really know it was the "Big Story" until a few days into it. That's how much attention I pay to this kind of stuff anymore.

Are you sure that wasn't the rape of a girl in Richmond, Virginia in the news?

I have been aware of and sporadically following both the Cleveland story and the Bay Area gang rape story-- just not motivated to start threads about them, for various reasons-- don't get off on reading about horrible stuff, don't want to read the callous quips about these tragic events (see "Do'h I hit a Deer" on the main forum), don't want to know who's the most intolerant or who's the expert on local police procedures 2,000 miles from their home, etc.

I don't think comparison to the "Balloon Boy" story is fair-- is there some big obvious debate point in regard to the Cleveland or Bay Area happening I'm missing? Whether they are real or intended as a money-making scheme maybe?

cbelt, I don't quite understand what it is you want.

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Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky,
We fell them down and turn them into paper,
That we may record our emptiness.

I think that it speaks (partly) to the fact that national broadcast networks do not have local reporters passing the stories along the string. I do not think there is a Big White Bwana somewhere spiking stories because they're about poor black people.

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Doc

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Seacrest
The big crime story here (SF Bay Area) at the moment is apparently a "gang rape" of a girl at a local high school. I did not really know it was the "Big Story" until a few days into it. That's how much attention I pay to this kind of stuff anymore.

Are you sure that wasn't the rape of a girl in Richmond, Virginia in the news?

Unless there's a "Pinole" or "San Pablo" and Contra Costa county courthouse in VA, then yes.

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"Mind your wants, cuz there's someone that wants your mind."

Quote
Seacrest

Quote
Doc

Quote
Seacrest
The big crime story here (SF Bay Area) at the moment is apparently a "gang rape" of a girl at a local high school. I did not really know it was the "Big Story" until a few days into it. That's how much attention I pay to this kind of stuff anymore.

Are you sure that wasn't the rape of a girl in Richmond, Virginia in the news?

Unless there's a "Pinole" or "San Pablo" and Contra Costa county courthouse in VA, then yes.

The rape took place in Richmond, CA. It's been all over the news here in the East and continues to make the opinion-shows on the national news channels.

I was making a bad pun in reference to the local vs national news debate.

'Probably shouldn't have even gotten into it. Just thinking about what happened to that girl makes me viscerally ill.

Why does Jon Gosselin's every movement show up at the top of my Google News page? If you can answer that cbelt3, I believe you have the answer to your original question.


I never knew who that person was until a few months ago, and now I cannot believe that he is "making news."