The Gangs of Beaumont

Earlier this week there was a huge fight… shots were fired… at least one person hit by a bullet… and another hit by a vehicle.

How did the media react?

Well, since it was a large group of teens fighting… and probably because the group is mostly Latino ( yes, there is prejudice among the media club )….. we ended up with reports of “Gang Violence” erupting in Beaumont.

I talked with an officer about this… an officer I trust… and what appears to have happened was a group of kids, some of whose dads were gang members, got into a huge fight and decided to handle it "just like pop would have done it."

There is no official statement by police saying this is a gang fight, but hey, call it a gang fight and you got a headline.

Our young sensationalizing “Journalism Majors” need to learn that every fight between two groups of teens is not a gang fight.

A gang is an organization or group who band together to do illegal activity, not a bunch of young punks who got into a big fight.

If this were a group of white middle class teens who got into a fight and one pulled a gun, would we be hearing the same gang rhetoric?

Something our media types need to think about is how their words affect our kids.

If you tell a non-gang-member kid he is a gang banger, guess what.

You are planting an idea into his head.

You just might make him start to think he’s Mr. Los Angeles in Southeast Texas when in reality he a punk kid who needs a wakeup call.

If memory serves me correctly, and I might be wrong, but I believe Beaumont had two murders this year.

I guess our gang members, you know, the ones causing all the fuss… they must have been napping most of the year.