Pointing out that this man, who had barely survived a shooting, occupied the zenith of statistical homicide risk doesn’t begin to describe the full dreadfulness of his situation. It wasn’t just that he was already lucky to be alive and that he was now being exposed as a snitch before two accused gang murderers. He was also an “underclass” black man, one of society’s outcasts. No newspaper was going to stop the presses if the man in the wheelchair got killed. No news station was going to cut into its regular programming. No detectives’ supervisor was going to yank the case away from a veteran
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