A Tale of Two Counties

Clayton County is immediately south of Atlanta. Its stereotype used to be lower/middle white flight: the auto parts store where John Wesley Morgan shot his father down is nearby. But over the last ten years, like a lot of suburban Atlanta, it’s become much more ethnically mixed. Its local government is notoriously dysfunctional even for metro Atlanta. Last night, a violent stalker story ended the way we’d prefer:

A shootout on the streets of Clayton County on Friday night sends a police officer to the hospital and leaves a suspect dead.

The incident happened in the area of Upper Riverdale Road and Tara Boulevard around 10:15 p.m. Investigators tell FOX 5 News that it all started when a minivan slammed into the back of a patrol car driven by Officer Melvin Snell while stopped at the light. They say the woman driving that minivan was involved in a “rolling domestic dispute” with a man following her in another car. That third vehicle ended up crashing into the back of the woman’s vehicle all stopped at the light.

Man tries to fight cop, pulls gun on cop and shoots him, second cop rolls up and kills the stalker. Let’s hope Officer Snell makes a full recovery, and that the woman can get her life back together.

We can then move on to Cobb County, northwest of Atlanta, whose stereotype used to be upper/middle class white flight but which also has become somewhat more diverse. Though it’s remained very politically “red”: the good residents of Cobb County will be the last to accept a passenger rail link to the city that is their reason for living in Georgia. East Cobb is suburban Whiteopia; West Cobb is more middle class. But nothing really changes:

Authorities say an officer shot and killed a man in Cobb County on Friday evening.

The incident took place around 8:10 p.m. in the 3500 block of Dallas Acworth Highway near Acworth.

The officer was responding to a domestic disturbance call when he heard shots fired and saw a man in the yard. That man allegedly did not comply to the officer’s commands to put his firearm down.

“The officer had to use deadly force to stop the threat because the officer’s life was, he believed, in danger,” said Officer Michael Bowman of the Cobb County Police Department.  “We do have a deceased victim at the residence, and as of right now, the officer is being talked to by detectives as the scene is being investigated at this point.”

There are fewer details on this one, but another domestic disturbance, another man with a gun, another death. That’s how pervasive violence between intimate partners really is. Murder over a car debt or a lotto ticket? Upper-class white people don’t do it. Mortgage fraud? Lower-class black people don’t do it—they’re the victims. But stalker/killer patterns make no distinction for class nor race; everywhere out there, there’s a person, nearly always a woman, at risk from someone, nearly always a man, whom she used to love or maybe still does or maybe just fears. But he stalks her, and underpaid cops have to shoot him. Sometimes, we get lucky and the cops shoot him before he kills her. But more often than not, we don’t.

New Twist on the Restraining Order

This gas station murder happened the other day and has been all over the news. But there’s a great story underneath a simple crime:

Hours after being denied a permanent restraining order against Roger Clark, Gregory Walker was approached by the man at a Clayton County gas station, Walker’s attorney said Thursday. Clark had already threatened to kill him over an unpaid debt, and Walker wasn’t taking any chances, Averick Walker, his attorney and cousin, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Clark sold Walker a car; Walker couldn’t pay it off in a timely manner. Walker got sick of the threats, got a temporary restraining order, and for whatever reason was turned down when he applied for a permanent protective order. So when Clark shows up and starts threatening him again, Walker kills him and is now claiming self-defense. Which, if I were on the jury, I’d be tempted to agree. Walker tried to go the legal route and the system wouldn’t work for him.

But then watch: it’ll come out that Clark was angry but not actually violently threatening Walker, and Walker was trying to use the system as a shield from being held accountable for not paying his debts.

Gettin’ a Little Faulkner in Here (2)

Update on the most recent story, about Stockbridge (low-middle very white suburbia) resident John Wesley Morgan, Jr. who shot down John Sr. at the auto parts business where they both worked.

John Jr. is claiming self-defense:

John Wesley Morgan, Jr., told Henry County police he shot his 79-year-old father — John Wesley Morgan, Sr. — in self-defense. Police say the younger Morgan’s claim doesn’t add up. They say he shot his father several times.

Police also noted that Morgan Sr. was not armed at his family’s auto parts business on Highway 138. They say a small handgun was found in his pick-up truck, but nowhere near his body. Morgan Jr., however, was heavily armed, police said.

Authorities said that an AK-47 was used in the shooting.

In other words, he has nothing. With one caveat: the article is unclear as to precisely what John Jr. means by “self-defense”. He could be about to pull a Law & Order and argue that the elder Morgan had systematically abused him all his life, and that the accumulated trauma finally caused him to snap. Which might could work, if there were sufficient documentation.

As usual, they save the best for last:

This isn’t the first time police have been called to Morgan Auto Parts for a fatal shooting. Back in 2006, the suspect’s brother allegedly shot and killed a man trespassing on the property.

“Allegedly”. Seven years ago? Stay tuned.

Gettin’ a Little Faulkner in Here

This one has it all:

A Henry County man was charged with murder Wednesday night, hours after he allegedly shot and killed his 79-year-old father at the family’s auto parts business.

Parricide? So many places to go with this one. Three good tidbits:

Other family members and employees watched as Morgan allegedly shot John Wesley Morgan multiple times during an altercation with one of his sons at the store, Bolton said. The older Morgan was found dead behind the store when officers arrived…

Police had been called to the business previously due to gunshots being fired, Bolton said. No further information about those incidents was available…

David Gentry said he had worked at the shop off and on for 20 years and was working when he heard gunshots. Gentry said he had never known the father and son to argue and was shocked at what happened. “I don’t know what snapped him or whatever,” Gentry said of Morgan Jr. “It was straight out of the blue.”

So, adult son empties clip into elderly dad. You empty the clip, you’re blind with rage. So it’s unlikely to be something like, dad discovers son is cooking the books, is about to dime him out.  That’s one or two shots. There’s incest, or rape, or something much creepier going on back here—or an adult son with some serious mental health issues, but the article probably would have addressed that, as it would have been the first thing the family would have said to a reporter.

The key detail for me is the “cops have been called there for gunshots before”. Really? And the reporter can’t be bothered to look this up? Stay tuned.

East Atlanta Murder Village

Here’s a story detailing efforts being undertaken to increase security in East Atlanta Village. “Village” is something of a misnomer: EAV is just a commercial strip near a series of single-family residential neighborhoods that were the epicenter of gentrification about ten years ago. Think Hipster Central, with little boutiques and bars serving Pabst Blue Ribbon, live music venues starring dudes with mandolins, that sort of thing.

But like every other gentrifying neighborhood in the city, there’s a lot of conflict, as an “us v. them” mentality arises. One of the remarkable things about writing fiction about Atlanta is that it’s impossible to extricate class conflict from racial conflict, all because of a dynamic I’ve mentioned multiple times on this blog: there are essentially no poor white people inside the city limits. So while there are thousands of affluent black people, they generally, for what they feel are excellent historical reasons, tend to stay in their own almost hermetically sealed private culture; gentrifying white people, outside the workplace, only see black people who are poor, and only see poor people who are black.

Fundamentally, the conflict in these gentrifying neighborhoods is a class conflict: (white) people move in, with what to the locals is a lot of money, and they fix up the house they bought and start having cute little white kids. And while the white gentrifiers are usually superficially pleasant to their impoverished black neighbors, they’re generally not going to invite them in or expect to be invited in. And like gentrifiers everywhere, they have absurdly unrealistic expectations about how the neighborhood should change the minute they move in: the police, who have been regarded as a hostile occupying force for decades and who largely leave the poor to their own devices, are suddenly expected to keep the neighborhood as safe as the affluent district the gentrifiers moved from. And they certainly won’t send their kids to the local public schools, nor let them run wild with the other neighborhood kids.

There are cultural conflicts (life among functional urban blacks is usually centered around a strong Christian church; educated white people are militantly secular), economic conflicts, conflicts of taste and decorum (poor people tend to play music much more loudly in public spaces), etc. Just something as simple as the habit of gentrifiers of fencing in their front yard rather than just the back is a physical manifestation of a cultural conflict.

And then once enough “pioneers” (a deeply problematic word) arrive, they start developing businesses; and these businesses do not cater to poor urban blacks. It’s not Jim Crow: they’re not going to stop black people from walking in. But there are enough cultural differences between these businesses and the ones the locals are used to that the locals won’t generally go there. Why in the world would you spend good money on cupcakes for dogs?

And then there’s a bar and restaurant district, where black people might work, but the owners and patrons are largely white. And the customers have a few drinks and walk around the corner to their car, and someone pulls up on them, draws down and robs them. Then shoots them. This has happened twice in EAV in the last week, and the white folks are just up in arms about it, as they should be. It’s their neighborhood, after all. And most of the remaining black residents are upset about it too, not only because murder = bad, but also because this means the cops are going to come down on them looking for suspects and/or scapegoats.

What’s going to happen? In about a week, some cousin is going to snitch on the extremely stupid 17-year-old boy who never had a pot to piss in and envied everyone else’s wealth and success, and failed out of school, and listened to too many gangsta epics written by rappers who work for record labels run by white people, and decided that he was going to make a name for himself by shooting some yuppie white people who’d had one too many craft microbrews. This kid will get life without parole, at a yearly expense to the state equivalent to about 2.5 full-time college students, and the family of the dead guy, a Georgia Tech grad who worked in the IT industry, will mourn. And about two years from now, some other stupid 17-year-old boy will show up, not having heard of what happened to the last one, and he’ll kill someone else with education and dreams and value to society.

The murderer’s story? Not that interesting: it’s a paint-by-numbers of deprivation. The victim’s story? More so, but as he’s fundamentally a victim of random crime, it’s hard to draw a parallel between his life and death. The class conflict? That’s where the real story lies.

One Fewer than Fifty Cent

Really lurid, terrible writing in this AJC story:

Adina Parson was in the prime of her life — a successful attorney married three years earlier to a man she cared for deeply. Rachel Harner was just returning from Afghanistan, eager to move on with civilian life and plan for her upcoming wedding.

The man they loved, Sandy Springs pet store manager Michael Parson, would turn their lives upside down through his lies and violence.

On Friday, the 43-year-old was sentenced to the maximum 35 years in prison for the attempted murder of his then-wife, Adina. The sentence capped uncertainty about the future of Parson, a self-described sociopath. It’s also a new start on healing for the injuries inflicted on his ex-wife, who is unable to care for herself; his ex-fiance, who’s reshaping “her trust in humanity,” and the friends and families who support them.

This seems like a story worthy of a book treatment—but not by me. Parson is too self-consciously evil to be much of a good villian. He lies, leads two women on, things begin to collapse, he thinks he’s got a foolproof plan. Note the neat bit of Big Brother that eventually nailed him:

Jurors said they had little doubt about Parson’s guilt, noting overwhelming circumstantial evidence and an alibi derailed by a technological smoking gun.

Signals from nearby cell phone towers placed Parson outside his apartment – and not at the Atlanta VA Medical Center in Decatur, as he told investigators – just minutes before the shooting.

Pro tip: don’t take your phone when you do a crime. But fundamentally, Parsons is boring to me. I was waiting to have a prescription filled this morning, so I flipped through the first 100 pages of the latest John Sandford novel. Sandford is a great role model for anyone trying to write character-driven mass-market mystery/thriller fiction, but he has a habit of making his villains unambiguously evil. And while I’m sure it, like every one of both Sandford’s series, will be a fun read and an astute, wry commentary on popular culture, this volume is no exception: she cheerfully has a political rival framed and the framer subsequently killed. It would be a much more interesting book if she were deeply conflicted about her actions, or if she’d been compelled to commit the crimes by other forces, whether internal or external.

In the same way, Parsons would be more interesting if he were less ambiguous. One way in which he is ambiguous, though, is whether he really is a sociopath or just a wannabe—a narcissist with sociopathic pretensions. The story could be interesting if Parsons the wannabe finishes what he thinks is the perfect crime, and then somehow comes into contact with a real sociopath, and things nose-dive for the evil little bastard. Imagine the sociopath, who he knows from work or some club for smug narcissists, figuring Parsons out, sneaking into Parsons’ house after Parsons is off to shoot his wife, takes the phone Parsons left behind on purpose, and drives along behind Parsons, watches him commit the crime, scoots back and puts the phone where Parsons left it, and never says a thing, until he visits Parsons after the sentencing. Now that’s evil.

Amber Alert!

Feel-good story from this morning:

A 1-year-old girl who was in the back seat of a car when it was stolen outside a daycare center near Atlanta was found safe Wednesday morning, authorities said.

Police got a call from a resident who had spotted the car parked in a neighborhood, Forest Park police Lt. Jason Armstrong said.

Police then found the missing car and the girl, asleep inside the vehicle, near Scott Drive and Holly Circle in Clayton County shortly before 7 a.m.

Authorities had issued a child abduction alert early Wednesday morning after the 1994 green Honda Accord was stolen outside the 24-hour Playskool daycare facility in Forest Park, just south of Atlanta.

Now, child abduction isn’t funny; but anyone who follows the news can tell you that abduction by a stranger is so rare as to be remarkable. The overwhelming majority of Amber Alerts come when a non-custodial parent decides that stealing their own kid(s) is actually a workable idea.

So in turning this into fiction, for low comedy we could go with the thief’s perspective. Crack kills, and opportunistic car theft is right up there on the crack-o-meter. You find an unattended car with the keys still in it, and off you go! Then, ten minutes later, the baby makes a noise; you adjust the rearview mirror to see what’s up and holy mother of god there’s a child in this car. Park, wipe steering wheel, forget that you left clear fingerprints on the rearview, exit stage left, spend the rest of the day in crack-fueled paranoia.

Better still, imagine if said crackhead stole the car from the non-custodial parent who’d already abducted the child. From the crackhead’s perspective, it doesn’t matter—though it might be funny to have the crackhead not notice the baby until dozens of cars filled with armed response officers surround him. But imagine the story from the noncustodial parent’s perspective. You’ve raged yourself up on alcohol and masculine entitlement until you’ve convinced yourself that stealing your own child is somehow going to work out. You bust into the daycare center, social-engineer taking the child, put her out in her car seat, run back in because you forgot your phone, come back out and the goddamn car is gone! NOW what?

As an aside, note that the daycare center is 24-hour. What’s up with that? Seems like the kind of fly-by-night thing where they’d actually let the non-custodial parent take the kid.