ABOUT 11 P.M. on Sept. 9, dozens of youths with bats and pipes descended on a tidy residential area of Port Richmond looking for white teens who allegedly had attacked an African-American kid at Stokely Playground a couple of hours earlier.
Two fearful white teens spotted Mark LaVelle on Indiana Avenue near Belgrade Street and asked for help. Suddenly, the mob appeared. LaVelle, who said that he didn't know the two kids, who looked to be 13 or 14, ran with them into his nearby house.
" 'We got you, you white mother-------!' " LaVelle said he heard someone yell in the "mob" of black and Hispanic youths.
Inside his house, LaVelle, 37, called to his wife, Kim, 30, to go to their bedroom with their twin 13-month-old boys, Mark and Mason, and to call police. He also ordered his two other sons, 11 and 17, and his nephew, 7, to stay upstairs.
Inside his house, LaVelle, 37, called to his wife, Kim, 30, to go to their bedroom with their twin 13-month-old boys, Mark and Mason, and to call police. He also ordered his two other sons, 11 and 17, and his nephew, 7, to stay upstairs.
With the two teens hiding in the house, LaVelle, 5 feet 10, 220 pounds, a well-known sports-league organizer and coach in the community, went outside to try to calm the angry mob.
They were standing on his steps. One shouted, " 'Something's going to happen now!' " LaVelle recalled in an interview Friday at his house. LaVelle got nervous and went back inside, locking his door with a deadbolt.
But the attackers pounded on his front windows and kicked his wooden door so hard, it flew open and some of them entered his house.
"The first guy hits me with a pipe. The second guy knocks me in the face. All I'm hearing is my wife and kids screaming," said LaVelle, who feared that the next time they saw him, he would be in a casket.
He said that he was able to push the attackers out the door, but then a third man - who had a gun - tried to extend his arm. LaVelle grabbed onto the gunman's lower arm and shoulder so he couldn't raise the weapon. Then, police sirens screamed in the neighborhood, and the mob turned and ran.
Read rest of the story here (no seriously - read it - its well written (better than my blog!) and is pretty complete).
I'm sorry y'all - this wasn't Dr. King's dream. Amazing how hatred lived long enough turns you into the very thing (idea) you hate. Believe it or not I feel for them if only for the misery that it is to live and feel that way every day where you're willing to do that and see nothing else you can do to get your way that violence has become acceptable. I also feel for the family attacked who will have PTSD for the rest of their lives and will be prisoners in their own home forever after.
Hope.
Change.
Where is it?
My home is set for self defense and someone would have been shot in my neighborhood if not several individuals shot if this happened in my home. Actually more like killed. Last time I had a mob on my front lawn I pulled out a 20 gauge and started picking my target and was getting ready to pull a man out through the window of his truck and put him down at gunpoint with a 20 gauge to his head on the pavement and clear a crowd and teach people some respect. They got the message as soon as they saw me out there with my shotgun and everyone drove away politely. The police showed up right after. It's quieter here now.
I wouldn't have been out there talking to the mob either in the above story, I'd have been screaming at them that they got two seconds to back off before I start shooting and started counting. Maybe five if I was feeling generous and felt the need to draw more attention to it to jerk their attention.
One of my assistants at work, I helped her buy her first firearm after someone was breaking into her home and I took her out and gave her a tactical shooting crash course and one of the things we covered was how to talk / yell at people to talk them down and give them directions. "I'm gonna F*** you up" isn't nearly as effective as "KEEP YOUR HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM AND TURN AWAY FROM THE SOUND OF MY VOICE YOU HAVE TWO SECONDS ONE!.......TWO!!!" You actually need to be giving directions. Your voice can be a major deterrent to preclude having to shoot someone. We were actually trained to use our voices and sound like we meant it to shock, disrupt, get attention, and give directions. SEALs, Green Berets - all learn this - but police use it a lot more often.
This is what drove me nuts as a police officer. I remember a mob attacking some guys who were screaming for help and by the time I got there they looked like chopped lasagna with cranberry sauce and it was always too late. I could NOT get there fast enough.
Defend yourself. Protect yourself. Arm yourself. Besides, think about it: why should someone else put their life on the line for you? Who are you so special that a stranger is going to WANT to DIE for YOU? What if nobody else is even around? What if the people you thought were going to protect you turn on you? Would YOU want to die for someone else? Why would someone want to do it for you? Safety's an illusion very often in these kinds of things.
I know it always happens to "the other guy" but we're all "the other guy" to someone else.
For home defense? A shotgun - a 12 gauge Mossburg 500 - is an excellent choice. Will shoot through walls, has a nice spread, plenty of firepower, no worrying about whether you miss or not. The US military carries the Mossburg 500 and they are affordable for only a couple hundred dollars or so which is cheap for a firearm (given that my 1911's are over $2,000 for differing variants). You can buy them from a gun show (very fun to go to) or even Wal Mart. The ammunition is in such a common gauge that finding ammo is easy. But even the sound of a Mossburg having a round chambered has a profound psychological affect on a mob or even neighbors. All of these things, your voice, the show of a firearm, the appearance of confidence and training, the sound of a round being chambered, are deterrents that can usually stop something before it escalates to where you have to shoot.Unfortunately, you don't often get to pick whether these things happen to you or not. And Luck favors the prepared.
