Murder Case Photographs- #21
, Then and Now 1954
The house number here was 1384 which doesn't exist today (below). Today the numbers go from 1382 to 1386 so right in the middle of the two houses below is where this one once stood.
This homicide detective, whom I don't know, had to be one of the first African-American people to reach that elite level. That alone makes this photo noteworthy. However there are some other things to see here. Enlarge the picture and look at the detective's eyes. Do you see how he is staring at the blood stain? That is the look that everyone gets from time to time in this business when you have to look at a murder victim or what's left behind, the blood. It grips you. I have never gotten used to seeing a murder victim and if I don't have to I won't. We get used to the work--we can eat lunch with a spread of bloody photos on our desks--and so did this detective but there are always those moments when we're not engrossed in our jobs and we just look at what is around us. I have seen this look many times on others faces and you respect it. You don't kid the person about it--"What are you staring at? You never saw a little blood below?"--I never heard anyone say anything like that. You respect what has happened and the humanity in your fellow coworkers when they get this look and you love them and this work all the more.
The other noteworthy thing about this photograph is its locale. This side of the street is, and was then, a middle-class African-American neighborhood of single family homes. However right across the street from here, where the cameraman is standing to take the "now" shot is the most notorious government housing project in this city. "Was" is the better word. It is now a shell of row after row of two story apartment buildings, the windows all broken out, crumbling, home only to a few homeless crack addicts. Literally right across the street. We have failed so much. The people who lived there and turned to drugs and thefts, robberies and murders, they failed. We who built these grotesqueries failed to provide those residents with the job opportunities that produce pride in ownership as opposed to resentment at a handout that breeds contempt, contempt in the residents to the governmental officials who condescended to put them here, hoping that they will be quiet and be out of sight, contempt by those governmental officials and the rest of us for those lazy, don't-want-to-work freeloaders. Lot of failure here.
PUBLIC OCCURRENCES
, Then and Now 1954The house number here was 1384 which doesn't exist today (below). Today the numbers go from 1382 to 1386 so right in the middle of the two houses below is where this one once stood.
This homicide detective, whom I don't know, had to be one of the first African-American people to reach that elite level. That alone makes this photo noteworthy. However there are some other things to see here. Enlarge the picture and look at the detective's eyes. Do you see how he is staring at the blood stain? That is the look that everyone gets from time to time in this business when you have to look at a murder victim or what's left behind, the blood. It grips you. I have never gotten used to seeing a murder victim and if I don't have to I won't. We get used to the work--we can eat lunch with a spread of bloody photos on our desks--and so did this detective but there are always those moments when we're not engrossed in our jobs and we just look at what is around us. I have seen this look many times on others faces and you respect it. You don't kid the person about it--"What are you staring at? You never saw a little blood below?"--I never heard anyone say anything like that. You respect what has happened and the humanity in your fellow coworkers when they get this look and you love them and this work all the more.
The other noteworthy thing about this photograph is its locale. This side of the street is, and was then, a middle-class African-American neighborhood of single family homes. However right across the street from here, where the cameraman is standing to take the "now" shot is the most notorious government housing project in this city. "Was" is the better word. It is now a shell of row after row of two story apartment buildings, the windows all broken out, crumbling, home only to a few homeless crack addicts. Literally right across the street. We have failed so much. The people who lived there and turned to drugs and thefts, robberies and murders, they failed. We who built these grotesqueries failed to provide those residents with the job opportunities that produce pride in ownership as opposed to resentment at a handout that breeds contempt, contempt in the residents to the governmental officials who condescended to put them here, hoping that they will be quiet and be out of sight, contempt by those governmental officials and the rest of us for those lazy, don't-want-to-work freeloaders. Lot of failure here.
PUBLIC OCCURRENCES
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