Word: youthe
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...many Americans dismissed the slaughter as an inner-city problem. But now the crackle of gunfire echoes from the poor, urban neighborhoods to the suburbs of the heartland. Omaha, with a population of 340,000, is just an average Midwestern city, which is why the story of its armed youth shows how treacherous the problem has become. The Omaha neighborhood of Benson, a tidy grid of suburban-style homes on the northwest side, has been taken by surprise. Three dozen shaken parents and troubled teenagers gathered on a rainy Tuesday night in May at the Benson Community Center, bracing...
...question preoccupies assistant police chief Larry Roberts, who has been on the Omaha force for 20 years. He says the big surge in youth violence started in 1986, when gang members from Los Angeles moved eastward to colonize smaller cities. Now teenagers throughout the area try to match the firepower of the gang members. "If one kid brings a little .22-cal. pistol and the other has a .357 Magnum, then guess who has status," Roberts says. The gunplay spread quickly beyond the gangs. "For some reason this particular generation of kids has absolutely no value for human life...
...other community leaders take offense at any suggestion that Omaha is dangerous. Compared with most American cities, it is not. So far this year, 16 residents -- about half of them juveniles -- have been murdered, which is just a bad weekend in Los Angeles. But if the battle against youth violence can't be won in Omaha, which has an unemployment rate of only 3.3%, the rest of the nation is in for trouble. So far that battle is being lost. On any Saturday night, Omaha's police radio betrays the city's image as a bastion of conservative heartland values...
...Jeff doesn't consider himself a violent guy, notwithstanding several broken noses. "I don't have a quick temper, but if I'm mad, I'm mad for three weeks," he says, which is a long time in the life of an armed youth. He graduated from Benson High School last year, and works digging fence holes while awaiting trial. "I'm trying to stay away from guns now, but it's like everybody has them. Guys will be like, 'I've got a 9-mm, and you've only got a peashooter.' Or they'll brag that 'my brother...
...shoot-out in August that really got Bonnie's attention. She decided to fight back, and formed the Benson Youth-Parent Association, which chaperones parties and patrols the streets. "There are drive-bys all the time," she says. "They don't even make the newspaper." Bonnie patrols Benson with a police scanner, banking on her belief that mothers still enjoy some diplomatic immunity on the streets. "If I won a million dollars tomorrow, I'd buy a few buses, fill them with kids and flee Omaha," she says. Flee where? "I hadn't thought of that," she responds...