Commentary: A Stray Bullet Wasn’t the Lone Culprit in Neenee Malone’s Death – Apathy Helped Kill Her

Date: Tuesday, May 10, 2005
By: Tonyaa Weathersbee, BlackAmericaWeb.com

Five-year-old Melanise “Neenee” Malone was killed last week – killed while trying, with the rest of her family – to flee the gang violence that has turned her Opa-locka neighborhood into a Florida Fallujah.

And today, I don’t know who I’m angry at most – the police department in this mostly-black city that was supposed to be protecting children like her but didn’t, or the neighbors who unwittingly abetted the gang violence that killed Neenee by accommodating it instead of fighting it.

Things shouldn’t be that way.

During a week that seemed to be brimming with nothing but bad news about black children, Neenee’s mother, Niquila Godbee, decided that she would try to give her children a fighting chance at reaching adulthood – or at least a few nights sleeping in the bed instead of on the floor to avoid being hit by the gang-war gunfire that peppered her neighborhood night after night. So, the Miami Herald reported, Godbee packed Neenee and two other daughters, along with her boyfriend, her sister and her cousin into a van. They were making their getaway to find some bullet-free air when their van was sprayed with bullets.

One of those bullets killed Neenee.

Neenee’s death, like the deaths of most children in crime-ridden communities, is a senseless one, an act committed by people who have, tragically, decided that their power lies in how well they can wield a gun. But when I see how this situation unfolded, I also see how the demons of apathy are killing many of our communities.

Two culprits in Neenee’s death are, to me, the Miami-Dade and the Opa-locka police. According to the Herald, residents in Neenee’s area known as the Triangle had frequently called on the Miami-Dade County police to do something about the gang violence in their neighborhood – violence that had escalated to the point where people were bedding down in hallways and beneath tables to avoid being shot. But the county police often refused to come out, saying that they would be encroaching on the Opa-locka police territory.

But then – get this – the Opa-locka police chief admitted to the Herald that they were too short-staffed to patrol a place like the Triangle. That admission is even backed up in a Florida Department of Law report cited by the Herald; one which said that drug dealers in that area even make deals in front of marked police cars.

So here, we have the county police citing a turf war with the local police as their excuse for doing nothing to protect a black neighborhood. Then we have the local police virtually admitting that they are powerless to do anything – and, on top of that, allowing the county police to use them as their excuse for doing nothing.

Somebody needs to start a huge voter registration drive in the Triangle, because someone needs to be voted out of office here. This is too pathetic.

But just as pathetic is the acquiescence of residents like Nicole Hood. When asked about the violence, she told the Herald that she was, in a way, used to it – and she talked about sleeping on a floor in a back room to escape one particularly dangerous spate of violence.

No one should ever let themselves get used to that sort of thing. But the fact that the residents are giving the criminals that sort of power, or haven’t become angry enough to do something about it says a lot.

At some point, I would hope that their fear of the gangs would be replaced by righteous anger; anger at the fact that their home, a place that is supposed to be a sanctuary, is a place of turmoil. Such anger is usually the stuff behind citizen movements that have, in many places, sent much of the criminal element packing for new stomping grounds.

Of course, I know that community organizing isn’t easy – especially when the gangs have pretty much settled in, and when people have other day-to-day survival issues. But as Neenee’s slaying shows, being safe in one’s home is a survival issue too – and it is up to all the good people in areas like that to figure out how to take back their neighborhoods. If that means voting or protesting sorry elected officials who hand them more excuses than solutions, so be it. If they have to sue somebody, so be it – because it makes no sense for them to live in a place where they have to worry about dying all the time.

No doubt, Neenee’s killing was a tragedy. I just hope that her neighbors are outraged enough to turn that tragedy into a wake-up call.