They said yes.

I said that it probably didn’t mean much to them, but that I wanted to express my condolences and asked them if there was anything Karen and I could do. That led to a thirty minute conversation that was one of the best learning experiences of my life. They talked about their slain friend, how they had no idea who shot him, and about life on the streets.

The spokesperson was a guy who called himself Drew. He was thirty-three, had been gang-banging since he was nine, and had been shot numerous times. He said that he hardly ever left the neighborhood except to go to prison. I asked him if it bothered him that white people were moving into the neighborhood. “No, no,” he said. “Color don’t matter. You came here to talk with us, so that makes you our homie. What we don’t like is people puttin’ up their Crime Watcher signs and hiding behind their windows and callin’ the cops on us, but never actually talkin’ to us. It’s our neighborhood, too. I lived here my whole life.”

He said that most of the violence around here was gang-on-gang, and that they would have dropped me a long time ago if they wanted to. Everyone grinned, and I kind of laughed a nervous laugh.

At one point, an unmarked squad car drove down the alley. A couple guys yelled, “cops,” and started to run. But then someone said, “It’s ok – we got a white guy here.” The cop stopped in front of us. He looked at us, and we looked at him, and he drove off.

I had followed the news to see if there would be much coverage. The Rocky Mountain News had a short, 136-word article that didn’t identify the victim. I couldn’t find an article in the Denver Post. Fox News and 9 News both devoted less than 15 seconds to the story, and neither identified the victim. That same night that 9 News reported a lengthy story about a dog in the suburbs that almost died, but in the end, didn’t.

Had a suburban youth had been murdered in his neighborhood, I’m pretty sure it would have been all over the news and that a whole army of support folks would have surrounded the victim’s friends. Instead, Tre’s friends were left to deal with their grief alone. The Rocky Mountain News reported, “A resident in the area said he heard several gunshots early Wednesday. He said many shootings happen in the area.” The implication was clear: This is a dangerous neighborhood and life isn’t all that important here. If it was, we might have actually gotten around to telling you who died.

His name was Tre. He was my neighbor.