The murder of Lusando Guzman-Feliz, a.k.a., Junior, in the Belmont section of the Bronx on June, 2018, had tremendous impact, and being close to home, i made sure to drop by. Not since the murder of Katie Genovese in Queens, have people felt universally the impact on street crime.https://www.google.com/search?
Why such impact? Digital video is cheap and it is everywhere. Where would we be with crime without it? In fact it’s a new god that keeps most in line who might otherwise be crooked. Another reason why the Lusando video had impact is, as younger people, the perps weren’t fazed by cameras recording the assault and murder from multiple angles including the final drag out to the streets and the terrible slashings – they acted as though it was their own little private world. Even the NYPD had one of its surveillance systems set up directly across from the deli – three cameras high on a strategic pole. The footage was shot robotically with coverage that was on the level of a feature film, with pretty damned good resolution, the edited version in real time and cutting is a morbid feature you cannot divert your eyes from in its tragedy and heavy drama. It was all too real, random and chaotic but not as it was played out by the technology of surveillance. The editing of the final footage spoke the international language of docu-entertainment – reality tv and drama so well, that you didn’t have to know anything about the day to day shit a young boy or man has to deal with in the west Bronx to feel it.
And it was felt. But in a way the Ms. Genovese’s tragedy was not. Junior’s encounter was recorded, the, and, not just sent out, by standard news agencies, but by everyone to everybody – today’s situation in relation to content and who can control it.
The cheap tech of digital video is only the price. Many are high resolution, and with a good lens, is lie the Lord himself testifying against you.
Celebrities like Rhianna were outraged and helped the cause, but, ya know, we all were.
So you just have to ask yourself – why was this one different? The event wasn’t too different all the others, but its presentation was.
Junior’s friends form the Explorers’ Club he belonged to gather on the day of his funeral. When you’re a tee in the hood, trying to do the right thing, you still grow up with all sorts, and, through, sometimes, brute experience, you learn.
If you begin your life’s quest without redeeming values – the thug – you over learn. But thise we solid foundations or facsimile stand the best chance of maturing.
When you are on the right side of things from the get-go, it’s not easy, but at least your starting point goes beyond the basics of revenge and the jungle mentality. At this early age, to experience this level of pain, it’s transforming, and a life long powerful memory that will effect important things in a life.
There’s no choice with the inevitable brutalities of life, particularly in the lower classes – either you redeem the trauma in action – deed and word – acting soulfully, sublimating with good works, or you do not, and become a part of the problem.
This murder went well beyond memory, and will serve a purpose by furthering fierce active condemnation and justice, in the form of every Trinatario that was in any way shape or form involved in this death, goes to trial – but there were lasting effects of Junior’s death. And certainly the seed of tragedy planted in the hearts of the young, will grow, and, all of us, got a chance to see what people of the lower classes are up against, particularly boys and young men
In the Bronx, especially on its west side in sections like Belmont, no matter age or anything else, generally, you don’t go out at night. This, in the Bronx, is actually seen, relatively speaking, as a big breakthrough – the fact that crime in tha Bronx has been tamed to the level of relative safety during the day that one can walk in all types of places all day long. But night in the west Bronx neighborhoods presents risks.
This is no defense of curfews which i broke with abandon at fourteen and onward – even running away for brief times, hitting the streets after midnight when my parents were asleep – you just taking a chance at night,
Todayn i live two miles from 183rd and Bathgate Avenue in Belmont and it’s the same over here, too. If i come home at night between 9:00 pm and 8:00 am the closest parking is a half-mile away in the abandoned University Woods with no lighting, carrying 7,000 bucks in camera gear.
This kid was fifteen and he was attacked at 11:00 pm after leaving his home at 10:30 to meet his friend.
Junior went to meet a friend, who needed ten bucks, on Adams Place, a street that is popular with his age group. On the way back home, in a terrible tangle of time and place, he ended up dead, very close to home and blocks from a major Bronx hospital that he was running towards when he collapsed and died.
If you’re not a thug and have the foundation at birth to set you on the right path, tragedy, particularly the death of friends and/or the first experiences of what will be, for us all, many deaths to come, can fuel character and commitment in ways that experiencia can. But not at age fifteen. That’s stuff for much further down the road – not in these sections of the city. If you’re not a thug, and most are not, there will be no choice – your friend’s death will live on, in both memory and deeds. Deeds that will be motivated by a permanent memory that won’t go away.
For those of us who don’t have that particular connection, the event generated an instant connection of injustice and sympathy in all who watched it. Too authentic content and a deep coverage presentation ignited this connection – the stirring of emotions – that had true impact on these street crimes, beginning with the sweeping up of any trinitario or associate that had any link to Junior’s death. I’m sure this same surveillance footage, our new Holy Ghost, will be their final demise.
What impact a digital video can display when it exposes what’s progressively forgotten – the actual lives of boys and young men, particularly ones without easy roads out of the 183rd and Bathgate Avenue in the Bronx. Reality is better than fiction because it’s real, of course, and can at times play itself out so perfectly – as if it had the organization and well-written theme of an actual movie about something socially horrible. This well-played out surveilance reality combined with coverage, editing by professional broadcast editors, professional narration and the digital video was really like none of its kind and as such did more to further Junior’s memory/cause than could be dreamed of because we don’t dream that way. The tragedy didn’t need to be recorded. It could have been stories in writing alone and would still have impact because it originates in the undeniable truth of realtiy, but not the same level nor kind of impact in the spread, or immediacy of available medias from phones to surveillance..