On the afternoon of Aug. 1, 2014, 3-year-old McKenzie Elliott was shot to death while engaging in the simple summer pleasure of standing on her own front porch in Waverly. She was the victim of a stray bullet in the seemingly senseless and never-ending cycle of violence that maintains its hold on many of our neighborhoods. In the months that have passed, a grand jury of sorts has deliberated concerning her killing. It is not a grand jury in the formal sense like those that have famously considered police conduct in the notorious cases of Ferguson and New York. It is, instead, a de facto grand jury of the community's collective conscience. But like the grand juries in those two prominent cases, it too has chosen not to indict. Indeed, no one has come forward with sufficient information to produce an arrest in McKenzie's murder. Apparently, the community has decided that this black life does not matter. At least it does not matter enough to risk the consequences of cooperating with the authorities.
McKenzie's killing occurred in broad daylight and was the result of an exchange of gunfire among several individuals. Indeed, two other persons were wounded during the episode. It is not a stretch to conclude that someone knows something about who was involved and that two things prevent critical information from being provided to the police — refusal to break the street code that forbids "snitching" and genuine fear of reprisal by the vicious hoodlums involved. One need only recall the Dawson family, who were all murdered in 2002 when their home in the Oliver neighborhood was firebombed in retaliation for reporting criminal activity. This paralysis has an undeniable grip on many neighborhoods that live with the all too familiar reality of guns and violence.
The cases of Michael Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in New York are, most significantly, a testament to the tension-filled divide between predominantly black communities and law enforcement. The protests that erupted have given voice to a long growing frustration accrued through decades of racially discriminatory treatment at the hands of authority. It is something as old as Jim Crow, and it remains an undeniable fact of American life. Nevertheless, the law enforcement side rightfully asks us to give due consideration to the difficulties of police officers faced with having to sometimes make split second decisions in communities where crime and violence are far too commonplace, and where there very presence is often the subject of resentment. It is a divide that sometimes results in a failure of justice. Sometimes that failure is the fault of law enforcement. At other times, as in the case of McKenzie Elliott, it is the fault of circumstances that implicate the community itself.
When a little girl in Baltimore is not safe on her front porch, it attests to the reality of a neighborhood absorbed in violent crime. When her neighbors turn their backs on her death and protect her callous killer from prosecution, it reveals a community saddled with a deep and racially-charged mistrust of law enforcement and one where guns and intimidation have purchased their complicity in the crime. It is a confluence of circumstances that conspires to deprive the community of its fundamental freedom to live in safety, and McKenzie Elliott paid the ultimate price.
I remember very well learning of the deaths of four other young black girls. They were attending a sermon at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., in September 1963, when a bomb planted by segregationists exploded. For many of us, their deaths galvanized our resolve for the cause of civil rights and the end of legally sanctioned racial discrimination. More than 50 years later, it is clear that there is still much to do in bringing freedom and justice to all of America. We certainly failed to provide those things for McKenzie.
Raymond Daniel Burke, a Baltimore native, is a principal in a downtown law firm. His email is rdburke@ober.com.