Richmond's Dead Bears and Citizens

On February 18, 2006 a 4 year old climbed into a bear compound and was bitten by the bears. The bears were subsequently put down.. I don't disagree with people who find this to be an overreaction to a situation that was the fault of the humans more than the bears. What I find to be extreme is the reaction of the public to this event. We are now three weeks into the story and it still makes front page news in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Maymont employees are mourning the death of the park's two black bears, destroyed yesterday after one of them bit a 4-year-old boy last weekend.

There pubic interest reached the point that the paper added this announcement to the stories in the paper.

Dear Readers:

Over the last few days we have published more than 1,000 comments related to the story about the bears at Maymont. We have reached a point where we believe that all of the issues related to this story have been fully discussed. Thus we have deactivated the reader reaction feature on this story. Comments can still be viewed, but new comments cannot be added.

During this time period six people were victims of homicide. Two of forcible rape. These stories seen to just fall into the routine news category. No overwhelming calls for justice if the City Government doesn't resolve the cases quickly. No local talk shows spending the whole day's program on the backgrounds of the people who fell victim to these crimes. No huge turnout by the public for the memorial services of the victims.

There is a distinct apathy on the part of the city toward crime, especially in the less affluent neighborhoods. In many cases no effort is even made to collect evidence. Patrols in some neighborhoods are only made when a complaint has been lodged. While every effort is made to get to the bottom of the case of the bears euthanasia, precious little attention is paid to the plight of people who just want to be secure in their homes.

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