In ethnic urban neighborhoods back in the 1950s, there were simply too many children to worry about their safety. Every new baby represented another burden. It was enough to just keep them fed and clean enough not to be reprimanded by the nuns at Catholic schools.
So, it did happen that kids on Bay Street in downtown Jersey City, New Jerey where I grew up did tumble out windows. There were broken bones but no deaths. Who thought about demanding the landlords put grates on or, more to the point, who have the courage to even bring that up? Also, it was understood that the mother was too busy with the other kids to monitor any particular one. Acccidents happen was the ethos.
That was then. Today, safety, especially that of children, is embedded as a value and as a law, even in the poorest neighborhoods. Look up at an urban tenement and sure enough there are grates on the windows.
Yet there wasn't one on the window where Gabriel Estevez lived. As THE NEW YORK POST reports, he fell, screaming, to his death. A crime has been committed. The safety of a child had been ignored. An example must be made of those who didn't protect Gabriel.
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