Oakland -- They got high and played video games during the day, the young men later told police. Their favorite was one called "Grand Theft Auto III," in which players win points for committing violent crimes. When darkness fell, they told investigators, they did it for real on the streets of Oakland. They called themselves the "Nut Cases" and roamed the city in an old Buick, looking for targets at random, police say -- robbing dozens and killing five people in the largest single crime wave last year as Oakland reeled from its highest homicide toll since 1997. Two days after Christmas, two members sprayed bullets into a house party, killing two celebrators inside, including a 14-year-old boy. Five days after New Year's, they allegedly jumped a young father on the street, took his wallet and killed him as he begged for his life. A witness to one of the robberies remembered part of the Buick's license plate, and police tracked down the car. Then investigators tracked down six suspects. Police announced the last two arrests last week. Some of the Nut Cases bragged to investigators about driving up Oakland's homicide rate and relishing the media coverage of their crimes. "They are a lot more violent and callous than even we are used to," said homicide Sgt. Tim Nolan, a 12-year police veteran. The five men and a woman, who police say admitted she set up one of the slayings, are in jail facing charges in four of the city's 113 slayings in 2002 and one of the first this year. They also are charged with nine robberies, and investigators say they may be responsible for 100 violent muggings. "These individuals were running wild," Police Chief Richard Word said. The accused are alleged ringleader Leon Wiley, 25; Joe Ralls, 26, and his two younger half-brothers, Demarcus Ralls, 18, and Jhomari Sutton, 20; their cousin, Deonte Donald, 17; and their sister-in-law, Aminah Shanta Dorsey- Colbert, 25. Donald is being charged as an adult. Each of the six, all raised near 98th and Edes avenues, is charged with one or more counts of murder. Most killings in Oakland involve people with some connection to the illegal drug trade, but these were different. Investigators believe the group began their spree by robbing street-corner drug dealers but later targeted slaying victims at random. Investigators began linking the crimes shortly after the death of Sunny Thach, who was robbed of $31 and shot to death on Jan. 6 as he carried his toddler's laundry from his car to his home on Sixth Avenue near Lake Merritt. A witness to an earlier robbery in the Oakland hills had given Officer Rayomand Sethna a description of several digits of the Buick's license plate. Sethna's research showed the car was registered to a Hayward woman, Dorsey- Colbert, with no apparent connection to any violent crimes. But Sgt. Ersie Joyner III told Sethna the Buick may have been used by several young men who pulled up to a crowded West Oakland street corner on Dec. 18 and sprayed lethal gunfire, killing Douglas Ware, 19. Joyner said he pulled over the same Buick near Castlemont High School, on the other end of Oakland, earlier that day, with Demarcus Ralls, Sutton and Donald inside the car. "Once we realized that they might be responsible for more than one murder, it just snowballed," said homicide Sgt. Mark Dunakin. Police obtained a search warrant for the car and found two handguns and a shotgun. On Jan. 16, Dorsey-Colbert and Sutton admitted their involvement in the killings, police said. A few days later, Demarcus Ralls and Donald also admitted to numerous crimes. "I've never seen anything like it before," Dunakin said. "They just started admitting to all kinds of robberies, too. They were totally nonchalant. They acted totally desensitized." The first slaying took place Oct. 24. Police said Demarcus Ralls admitted to killing Joseph Mabry, 36, a youth basketball coach who was having an affair with Dorsey-Colbert, who admitted she helped set up the shooting. Next was the killing of Ware on Dec. 18. Donald told investigators he was one of two gunmen who opened fire on the street corner for reasons that remain unclear, police said. "It appeared that they fired at everyone who was out there," Nolan said. "They were just firing into the crowd without necessarily singling out Mr. Ware." The Nut Cases allegedly struck again two days after Christmas. Wiley, who had moved to the 800 block of Campbell Street in West Oakland, apparently got in an argument with a neighbor. On Wiley's orders, Demarcus told police, he and Joe Ralls opened fire into the front door of an apartment at 871 Campbell St., where a holiday celebration was taking place, Sgt. Gus Galindo said. "They just went to the residence, knocked on the door and opened fire with an assault rifle," Galindo said. Keith Macki, 14, was shot in the head and became Oakland's youngest homicide victim of the year. Jerry Duckworth, 24, a family friend who tried to save the boy as a hail of gunfire burst out, died when he was struck six times. Deborah Colbert, the aunt of three of the accused men, said the charges against them are "too bizarre to be true" and completely out of character for the "good-hearted young men" she helped raise. "They are not Nut Case killers," Deborah Colbert said. "They don't rob people. They never have. My boys don't play those violent video games. They don't play them during the day. They don't live them out during the night." But investigators who interviewed the accused men see them in a different light. "The amount of damage they did here was just staggering," Nolan said. Taken from : http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/02/10/BA200304.DTL Kotaku
Thats awful. They didnt get to intensive about the GTA game, but it seems to be a favorite journalist thing to bring violent games up. All I can say is this, GTA might have given them the idea to go on a rampage, but you need to be severely messed up or extremely sadistic to carry it out.
I find it pretty disturbing the US press tends to blame videogames, while noone seems to make a fuss about gun possession...
I am going to go: rob a bank and blame Splinter Cell. run over a frog and blame Frogger. OD on pills and blame Pacman. perform operations without a license and blame Trauma Center. run other drivers off the road and blame Crazy Taxi. blow up DC monuments and blame Destroy All Humans. etc., etc., etc. After all, we know that none of us is responsible for our own actions. We are too stupid to think for ourselves and must do what the glowing box tells us to do. :fresh:
American media/parents always blame something. Before video games, it was Bevis and Butthead (at least when I was in high school). Not sure what it was inbetween.
Beavis and Butthead came around in 1993 till 97, and in the middle of this time Columbine happened, so there was probably nothing in between.
I made a mistake at work today. When my boss asked me about it, i said "I blame Grand Theft Auto". He just sighed and walked away. These people are sick. You would have to be pretty unimaginative in order to need video games to teach you how to commit violent acts.
I find it pretty disturbing that people are so quick to let the game off the hook yet can easily make the jump to blaming the guns. Personally I don't think that its that great of a leap to think that GTA was a trigger for these acts. The people who did this were obviously predisposed to this type of violence, so its not too hard to see these a-holes sitting around playing the game and saying " Hey wouldn't it be awesome to do this in real life? Fuck yeah, lets do it!" That having been said, I don't think that these types of games are to blame, but that they can have an impact on individuals that are clearly unbalanced to begin with. As far as the guns are concerned I'm not gonna start the whole gun control debate as that would surely result in a lockdown, but guns, just like the game, are inanimate objects.They can't commit crimes. Blame the people.
Which is more dangerous though, an unstable person with a PS2 and a copy of GTA or an unstable person with a gun? Video games are just an easy excuse for people not wishing to blame guns (infuriating the pro-gun lobby), the lack of parental responsibility (alienate the parents) or the people themselves (Madman kills people just because he's mad? Need a better angle than that to sell papers). The classic example is a couple of teenagers, 13 and 15, who opened fire on passing cars with a rifle after playing GTA. No mention of the parents bought them an R-rated videogame and the rifle which they used in the shootings. Games, like Marilyn Manson, are just a way to shift responsibility onto an easy target. 'Video nasties' were a tabloid favourite in the UK in the late 80s/early 90s and were similarly blamed for all of societies' ills. It constantly amazes me that only violent video games and not violent movies are blamed for these kinds of attacks. Presumably because in Joe Public's mind, video games are meant as childrens' toys, not as entertainment for adults.
The way I see it you can't blame anything except the people who perpetrated the crime. Don't blame guns or games, blame them.
Guns/Games don't kill people, people kill people. As for people being influenced to do something based on media (games, movies, etc.) I think it's possible if while growing up said people arn't taught properly whats right and wrong, and develop good moral foundations to lead their lives by. Though it's also true that all people are not created equal (from various perspectives, though were focusing on the mental one here). Because of this some people are simply born with greater suseptability to being influenced by outside sources. This doesn't mean that people are born with a pre-disposition to crime, but that anything arround them can have a major impact on their way of thinking (good things as well as bad). Of course, thats a summarized and chopped up opinion of mine on these matters, and as far as I know has no hard factual evidence to back it. So take it as you will.
People with guns kill people. Sometimes they watch games. Should they all be outlawed? I don't think so. I still hate guns though.
Don't forget, sometimes they do it with knifes, bats, bombs, lead-pipes, chainsaws, cars, planes, poison, water (drown), axes, tazers, etc.
How about you need a liscense to buy really violent games? Everyone should take some kind of insanity test or have their brains scanned and have a card that says insane / not insane and wear it around their neck. Dont sell firearms or anything sharp to the insane people, it just might work. To quote family guy "Guns dont kill people, dangerous minorities do." :lol:
Fabrizo, nicely put. This is what I was getting at, but you worded it much better. When I said predisposed I didn't mean that they were born that way, just that because of the lives that they have led and most likely their upbringing they are more likely to react this way to games like GTA than a more well adjusted human being. "Which is more dangerous though, an unstable person with a PS2 and a copy of GTA or an unstable person with a gun? " They are both equal in my eyes. If an unstable person really wants to do some damage they will do it whether they have access to a gun or not.
If someone naive enough to thing a video game can bring someone to that level I supose you never go outside. If someone already has the intention to already act these crimes out, they will do it no matter what. Are we to blame pac-man for serial killers that date back to the 70's? Or how about even further back? Using video-games and movies to point the finger to is just an easy way out of it.
Um, no. What we need is to force people to get licenses before breeding. Just about every single violent event like Columbine could have been prevented, or lessened, if the parents actually paid attention to their damn kids. Seriously, we had Congressional hearings which resulted in a voluntary rating system which is better than the movie rating system. The ratings are clear and conspicuously placed on EVERY game released at retail since most retail stores won't carry unrated games or movies anymore. While I will not argue that stores shouldn't card kids when they try to buy M rated games, it is the parent's responsibility to pay attention what what they are buying or what their kids are buying. And if parents are apathetic because their kids will be able to play the game at a friend's house, then they shouldn't let their kid go to that house. Easy solutions, but the parents will never be held accountable. :banghead:
