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Mike Spencer, a divorced father of two, rises slowly to speak but the tears flow before the words. He stammers, "What in God's name are you kids doing with your lives?" In the corner, seven young men sink lower and lower in their chairs, their faces disappearing beneath an assortment of baseball caps. Spencer is too upset to say any more. Joseph Henry, a father of six, stands up. "I've been to four funerals in North Omaha, all kids," he says. "Can't young people get together without slaughtering each other?"
The question preoccupies assistant police chief Larry Roberts, who has been on the Omaha force for 20 years. He says the big surge in youth violence started in 1986, when gang members from Los Angeles moved eastward to colonize smaller cities. Now teenagers throughout the area try to match the firepower of the gang members. "If one kid brings a little .22-cal. pistol and the other has a .357 Magnum, then guess who has status," Roberts says. The gunplay spread quickly beyond the gangs. "For some reason this particular generation of kids has absolutely no value for human life," he says. "They don't know what it is to die or what it means to pull the trigger."
Yet many have seen by first-hand experience. Jennifer Rea, 15, allegedly shot to death her two younger sisters one afternoon last March with a .22-cal. pistol. Carlos Fisher, 16, put a .38-cal. pistol to his head in May while playing with some friends at his house and pulled the trigger, killing himself. Police believe he either was playing Russian roulette or assumed the gun was unloaded. Travis Hogue, 18, is accused of shooting and killing Nikki Chambers, 19, a male rival, in the rest room of a McDonald's in April with four shots from a .38.
Mayor P.J. Morgan and other community leaders take offense at any suggestion that Omaha is dangerous. Compared with most American cities, it is not. So far this year, 16 residents -- about half of them juveniles -- have been murdered, which is just a bad weekend in Los Angeles. But if the battle against youth violence can't be won in Omaha, which has an unemployment rate of only 3.3%, the rest of the nation is in for trouble. So far that battle is being lost. On any Saturday night, Omaha's police radio betrays the city's image as a bastion of conservative heartland values: "Caller reports two youths with guns in a parking lot . . . Anonymous caller reports shots in her neighborhood . . . Drive-by shooting reported . . . Officer reports at least 10 shots . . . One young male wounded by gunfire."
In Doug's ramblings with his sawed-off, he has peppered his neighborhood with shotgun pellets. He can't explain why he shot the dog. "What does it matter?" he asks with a shrug. Late one evening last March, he and a few friends crept up to a house and took several potshots. "I saw this dog sitting on a couch in this big window above the front porch, so I just shot him." Doug's expression is devoid of remorse or bravado as he drives by the brown, two-story house, recounting the incident one afternoon. A teenage girl with long brown hair sits on the porch reading. The outer walls of the house are still pocked with pellet holes. "I'm not sure what kind of dog it was, but he fell out the window and onto the porch," says Doug. "I could hear him yelping as we ran away."