Article Response by Bruno

Photography and Human Condition

HOMELESS ARTICLE

            The article that I read is called “Attacks on the homeless rise, with youths mostly to blame,” by Amy Green.  In the article Amy is talking about how there is a lot of violence going on in the streets with homeless people involved.  But the homeless are not the ones causing the violence, they are being victims of violent acts by people going by. Some people are beating them up, spitting at them and screaming at them for no reason what so ever. But the majority of the violence is being caused by teenagers who are still in high school and is hanging out at night with friends.

            In this article Amy Green shows a story of a teenager, who at the time was 15 years old, attacked a homeless veteran that was in the streets. Warren Messner was with some friends and they beat Michael Roberts and left him on the street to die. Messner was sentenced to 22 years in jail, and now three years after the committed crime he says, “ it was just a senseless crime”,  following with, “ I wish it would have never happened. It made no sense. It was stupidity.” Only speaking to his parents once in a while, Warren with arms filled with gangster tattoos is now claiming he is regretting what he have done.

            In my opinion 22 years is not enough. Michael Roberts will never come back no matter what because of actions taken by teenagers that were trying to smoke marijuana in the streets at night and decided to play with another person’s life. Now after three years in jail Messner confesses to regret all the actions taken that night. But only because he was caught. Who guarantees that he would regret those actions even if he was not caught. He could just go on and live his life normally like nothing had happened.

            Of 147 unprovoked attack on homeless  people in 2007, about 32 were in Florida. Florida has a lot of these attacks on homeless. Other stories mentioned by Amy Green in this article were the ones about the group of kids caught on camera in Fort Lauderdale beating a homeless person with a baseball bat. They went around and beat three homeless that night killing one. Drugs and influence are great factors of this brutal act. Teen agers are going around at night and when they see someone that they think that will not react and nothing will happen to them, they take advantage and do as they will with that person.  “People seem to pick on the most vulnerable because they really think that they won’t do nothing,” said Mr. Siletti who was attacked in the 80s. Teenagers just need to realize that they will also be charged, specially when dealing with such brutality, also understand what is right or wrong, they are not kids anymore.