On Father\u2019s Day at a church in Chicago, Barack Obama preached that \u201cof all the rocks upon which we build our lives\u2026family is the most important.\u201d\u00a0 And we must \u201crecognize and honor how critical every father is to that foundation\u2026They are mentors and role models.\u00a0 They are examples of success\u2026But if we are honest\u2026we\u2019ll admit that what too many fathers also are is missing \u2013 missing from too many lives and too many homes.\u00a0 They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men.\u201d\u00a0 The children of these missing fathers are \u201cfive times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime, nine times more likely to drop out of schools, and twenty times more likely to end up in prison.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a hospital bed in Bakersfield, California, about the time Obama was speaking, Ezequiel Jimenez Perez was going to miss Father\u2019s Day for the first time.\u00a0 He\u2019d just been declared dead.\u00a0 Some of his family members, which include his wife of fifty-eight years, eight adult children, and many grandchildren, had desperately searched for him and called hospitals since the previous morning when, unknown to them, he was found unconscious, only two blocks from his home, in the south alley of the 1200 block of Niles Street, a wretched slice of town on the eastside.\u00a0 Police, for reasons still unexplained, did not immediately knock on enough doors to identify the victim.\u00a0 Their imperative instead was the pursuit of criminals.\u00a0 Before nightfall they\u2019d arrested four suspects and on Father\u2019s Day booked another \u2013 two age thirteen, two age fourteen, and a fifteen-year old.<\/p>\n
Forty years ago Ezequiel Jimenez Perez had left Texas for Bakersfield, and here he worked for a steel fabrication company until his late sixties.\u00a0 In retirement he walked two miles a day, even at age eighty-one, and early mornings pushed a shopping cart through alleys in search of aluminum cans.\u00a0 He earned about eighty-five dollars a week doing this.\u00a0 Much greater was his spiritual reward for remaining active and motivated.\u00a0 On his final walk Ezequiel was nearly home when assailants pushed him down, repeatedly punched him in the head, battered him with a stick, and pummeled him with a bucket before they took his cans and cart and fled. \u00a0Then they rushed back and again beat the old man. \u00a0One of his daughters, Rosemary Perez, later said she could not recognize the disfigured corpse of her father.<\/p>\n
The suspects were arraigned in juvenile court last week.\u00a0 As stipulated by California law, the two thirteen-year olds will be tried as minors and, if convicted of first degree murder and other enhancements, will be released from the California Youth Authority no later than age twenty-five.\u00a0 The deputy district attorney, Craig Smith, said his department would at a fitness hearing seek to try the three oldest suspects as adults since the crime indicated not merely brutality but an extended thought process in twice assailing the five-foot-five, one hundred ten pound victim.\u00a0 Another elderly collector of aluminum cans was also attacked. \u00a0He survived but is reluctant to cooperate with police.\u00a0 Some of the youths, additionally, had gang affiliations and were on probation.\u00a0 The three oldest suspects are not eligible for the death penalty but could face life sentences.\u00a0 All five would leave confinement with two strikes.<\/p>\n
On local talk radio, which is often redneck but occasionally insightful, one host, Jaz McKay of KNZR, noted the suspects at arraignment were supported by mothers and other women but no fathers.\u00a0 Where were the fathers who should\u2019ve guided their sons?\u00a0 Were they in prison?\u00a0 Outside court, some mothers insisted their boys were good kids and couldn\u2019t have committed such crimes.\u00a0 One proclaimed her son was just \u201cin the wrong hood at the wrong time.\u201d\u00a0 Whatever her son\u2019s legal status is determined to be, he was indeed in a bad place.\u00a0 Last Thursday I drove over to check it out.\u00a0 The south alley of the impoverished 1200 block of Niles Street is a disgrace.\u00a0 Graffiti, more than I\u2019ve ever seen, mars fences and apartments and shabby houses and abandoned shacks and even the dumpsters.\u00a0 Many people in this hood should use those dumpsters.\u00a0 Garbage surrounds them and lies rotting up and down the alley. \u00a0Ezequiel Jimenez Perez deserved a better place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Father\u2019s Day at a church in Chicago, Barack Obama preached that \u201cof all the rocks upon which we build our lives\u2026family is the most important.\u201d\u00a0 And we must \u201crecognize and honor how critical every father is to that foundation\u2026They are mentors and role models.\u00a0 They are examples of success\u2026But if we are honest\u2026we\u2019ll admit…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,10,28],"tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\n