While today's moviegoers sit quietly in the dark eating popcorn, yesterday's Colosseum spectators were whipped into a frenzy watching violent spectacles. Only the costumes have changed. Today's more passive spectator sports still rouse the same passions for excitement and violence. Two thousand years later, things really haven't changed. While sociologists warn about the effect of TV or film violence, far too many people lose their lives, caught in the deadly crossfire of America's urban war-zones.
More people are outraged over racial slurs than bloodshed in the streets.
Working the streets is no picnic for law enforcement faced with the unhappy task of wresting control of neighborhoods from tyrannical gangs now infesting America's great metropolitan centers. With the Los Angeles Rampart scandal making headlines, the ongoing war to reclaim the streets rages on. Coming too close to home, Los Angeles police chief Bernard Parks watched his granddaughter become another mortality statistic in the battle with street gangs. Kill or be killed becomes the modus operandi for law enforcement trying to survive in a blood-thirsty environment. Watching their buddies maimed or murdered, it's easy to see how police become jaded with an 'us against them' struggle for self-preservation.