Sure, probably when I was in the third grade I drew some violent pictures, cowboys and Indians, perhaps. I remember drawing some beatnik looking freaks with cigarettes or pipes dangling from their mouths but I had no idea then what Bloods or Crips were, probably because in 1972 when the Bloods were formed few of us had any idea gangs would become such a problem.

My first realization of gangs probably wasn’t until I saw Boyz in the Hood and that seems like such a long time ago.

There are so many underlying things in this picture that bother me and had I discovered the drawing back when it was seized from a county school wall two years ago, I would have probably dived deeper into it.

Time passes, however, and I can only hope the teacher who gushed over this macabre drawing was at least disciplined, at the most suspended for a week or so.

Who knows the world this child has seen? From talking to law enforcement sources, they believe this child has been exposed to the deepest levels of gangs, the mysterious codes of which the only thing they’ve been able to decipher is the child lives or lived on Highway 48.

Blue clouds cry raindrops for the fallen Crip in this drawing but yet the child has no sympathy for the person’s fate, mistakenly thinking a Blood can shoot over another Blood’s head without fatally wounding, or at least seriously injuring, a comrade.

This, besides the rough drawing, is the only childlike quality of this drawing. This child knows too much, perhaps has seen too much, and it wouldn’t surprise me if this child one day isn’t reduced to a mugshot sent to me from Roanoke Rapids Police Department or Halifax County Sheriff’s Office to accompany a crime story about a robbery, break-in, assault or worse.

I know this sounds negative and perhaps I am stereotyping, but this drawing makes me cringe.

Since I know the child’s name, unfortunately I will probably catch myself looking for his name a few years from now. I feel bad for it, but if this child’s parents let him draw this garbage, then what else are they letting him get away with?

No, the world isn’t all smiley faces, birds chirping in the branches of blossoming trees or cozy houses with freshly baked pies cooling in the window sill. To believe that is to believe a lie.

I think there are solutions and I believe it first starts with all law enforcement in the area admitting there is a gang problem here and stop saying well, we may have this gang but we don’t have that gang.

This drawing shows there is a gang problem here and you can call it wannabes if you’d like, but for a third grader to know deep codes and call, presumably his house, a Blood house there is a problem.

I don’t know how you address the second issue. To me, gangs are, and I’ll be blunt, stupid, and just another example of organized crime. Defeat the gang problem and you’ve accomplished something great, something worthy of a Nobel Prize.

The third issue is the schools. That this drawing was even posted on a wall with other art work represents a severe lapse in judgment by school officials, starting with the teacher who praised the child for his work and did not recognize signs of a possibly troubled home life or did the teacher believe the family that bangs together stays together?

Two years in the world of journalism is a long time to chase a drawing now removed from a school wall by an observant law enforcement officer.

That it was placed there at all will forever make me cringe.

Lance Martin is editor and publisher of rrspin.com