Kid Killers

The victim had no identification. All police found last week in an abandoned house on Detroit's West Side was the body of a "woman" shot once in the head. The following day, the morgue's chief investigator identified her as Jamelle Williams, 14, a runaway. She became the 40th child under 17 to be shot to death in Detroit this year.

Already plagued by the nation's highest homicide rate, Detroit is experiencing an epidemic of children shooting children. As of Dec. 11, said a Detroit Free Press report, 341 youngsters under 17 had been shot this year, a sharp rise from last year, when 237 were shot, 31 of them fatally. Police have charged 36 children with homicide; the youngest is twelve.

Two days before Williams' death, Detroit Mayor Coleman Young reluctantly signed a gun ordinance that imposes a minimum 30-day jail sentence for a first offense of carrying a concealed firearm without a permit. Young, who has beefed up Detroit's police force over the past 18 months and helped organize community action against crime, described the ordinance as "little more than a fig leaf covering . . . a very complex and very serious problem."

Young attributes the problem in part to an unemployment rate among inner- city black youth that far exceeds 50%. Some city leaders, however, point fingers at Young, who has long been hostile to gun control and has asserted that citizens need to be able to defend themselves. The availability of handguns, critics say, makes violence inevitable. Says FBI Agent John Anthony: "I remember when carrying a gun was pretty heavy stuff. Now you get 14- and 15-year-old kids carrying guns." Anthony and others claim that the widespread sale and use of crack has promoted warfare among young, heavily armed drug dealers. Notes Harry Hamilton, chief investigator at the morgue: "Kids can make $900 a week standing on a street corner whistling when a scout car goes by. There are plenty of 15- or 16-year-olds doing things like that, but they never get to be 21."

It is difficult to see an end to the cycle of violence. Young says there are no jobs for kids and no jail space for criminals. But some hope the mandatory sentences for illegal firearms will make young and old think twice before picking up a gun.