Vision Circle

The Dawson Family, And Snitching

This is for cnulan.

The Dawson Family

More than 2,000 friends and neighbors paid last respect to a mother and five children of a Baltimore family who were killed in a house fire believed set by vengeful drug dealers. A day earlier, a seventh family member died from injuries he received in the Oct. 16 fire. Funeral services were held for Angela Maria Dawson, 36; and her children, 9-year-old twins Keith and Kevin, Carnell Jr., 10, Juan Ortiz, 12, and LaWanda Ortiz, 14.
During a press conference, police commissioner Edward Norris, calling the day the saddest in his career, admitted that the reality of life in Baltimore�despite his zero tolerance for drug dealers�is that when a family like the Dawsons is threatened by drug dealers, there is little the police can do besides relocating them for their own protection.
A message of death was sent to Angela and Carnell Dawson when they asked dealers selling drugs in front of their East Baltimore row house to move and set up business elsewhere. The heartless answer from these street thugs came Oct. 4 when they threw two Molotov cocktails into the family home.
As fire swept through their kitchen, and suffocating smoke filled the three-story house, the couple blindly grabbed their five children and stumbled outside into the darkness. They stood there trembling in terror. Mrs. Dawson, realizing the deadly danger posed by the attempted arsonist, wrote a hand-written note to police asking for help.
Two weeks later, on Oct. 16, shortly after midnight, the fear and retaliation the family had expected arrived in flames and death. One resident said the house looked like it �blew up, just burst into flames,� as if caused by �an incendiary device.�
The blaze erupted into a raging fire that swept through the sleeping family�s corner house at 1401 E. Preston St. The mother and her five children were burned to death. Carnell Dawson Sr., 43, jumped through a window, and was in critical condition at the Bay View Burn Center with burns over 80 percent of his body. He died last Wednesday, the day before his wife and children were buried.

Now, for Snitching...

In Boston, a witness to a shooting by a member of a street gang recently found copies of his grand jury testimony taped to all the doors in the housing project where he lives.
In Baltimore, Rickey Prince, a 17-year-old who witnessed a gang murder and agreed to testify against the killer, was shot in the back of the head a few days after a prosecutor read Mr. Prince's name aloud in a packed courtroom.
And in each city, CD's and DVD's titled "Stop Snitching" have surfaced, naming some people street gangs suspect of being witnesses against them and warning that those who cooperate with the police will be killed. To underscore its message, the Baltimore DVD shows what appears to be three dead bodies on its back cover above the words "snitch prevention."
These are only a few examples of what the police, prosecutors and judges say is a growing national problem of witness intimidation by youth gangs that in some cities is jeopardizing the legal system and that bears striking similarities to the way organized crime has often silenced witnesses.
"Witness intimidation has become so pervasive that it is ruining the public's faith in the criminal justice system to protect them," said Judge John M. Glynn of Baltimore City Circuit Court. "We are not much better off than the legal system in Mexico or Colombia or some other sad places."

Carmelo Anthony appeared in that DVD. That's why Cummings is in Anthony's behind.

Now you know.