David Monroe pulled a gun from his pocket, said “f— it,” and fired five shots at a boy he had never seen before. At age 15, he became a killer.
The midday shooting on a Stockton street in 1997, while heinous, was hardly uncommon when it happened. In the mid-1990s, a juvenile was slain, on average, almost every day in California. Arrests of youths for violent felonies averaged about 60 a day statewide. Juvenile halls became so overcrowded, authorities were forced to release hundreds of young offenders early each month.
The idea of Monroe and teenagers like him — so-called “super-predators” who supposedly killed and robbed without remorse — terrified many. The belief that generations of children to come would be swept up in violence prompted a severe toughening of penalties for young criminals and a decades-long building boom of juvenile halls.
[For more on this story by Jill Tucker and Joaquin Palomino, go to https://projects.sfchronicle.c.../vanishing-violence/]
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