The news from the corner of Eugene Avenue and Lawrence Street Tuesday night proved disheartening.

Randy Miles’ body lay in the street, covered by a sheet. He is dead of a gunshot wound

As police crawled over an area searching for bullet casings, talking to individuals and keeping bystanders away from a crime scene a small group of residents gathered on the corner.

Did they hear any gunshots? Did they see anything strange in the neighborhood?

One person answered, “We hear so many gunshots around here, we don’t pay attention to them anymore.”

OK, you say, it’s another shooting in Selma. People have killed, robbed and hurt people in Selma because the city is going down. Nobody cares. Nobody can stop it.

That kind of defeatist thinking hurts us. It hurts the people who live in the neighborhoods where this kind of violence is prevalent. It also hurts the people who live in neighborhoods where there is less violence.

Lassitude on the part of the city as a whole means the criminals have won; as a community we have given up on our right and responsibility to provide for our safety and that of our friends, neighbors and relatives.

Apprehension of those who live in the most violent of neighborhoods here in Selma is reasonable. These people are afraid of retribution and rightly so.

Despite our differences, we are one community. We have a right to expect to live in our homes peacefully and without fear. Any time a crime occurs in this city, it doesn’t just happen over there; it affects all of us.

It is time we said enough is enough. It is time we formed watch groups all over the city to listen and be aware for our neighbors and ourselves.

Randy Miles is not the first person to have died violently this year, but with God’s will and the assistance of all the residents of the city; let us make it the last.