Update 3: One of the victims of the shooting has been released from the hospital. One man died from his injuries earlier this morning and another is still being treated for life-threatening injuries.

Police say they've released one of the men arrested in relation to the shooting. Another man is being booked in to King County Jail for investigation of assault.

Police say they are still looking for another suspect.


There has been much talk about the Blue Wall of Silence, and not enough talk about its counterpart: the Black Wall of Silence, which on the street is called "no snitching." That code will do its best to shield the other suspect in the Chop Suey shooting from the law and add more fuel to this present cycle of violence.

As the PI recently reported:

Joplin was one of four juveniles killed in 2008. De'Che Morrison, who was found dead from a gunshot wound in South Seattle a week after Joplin's death, was the youngest, at 14. Pierre Lapoint, who was shot Aug. 5 on Rainier Avenue South, was 16. Quincy Coleman, who was shot to death on Halloween near Garfield High School, was 15.

All these cases are among the nine linked to gang violence.

Police, hindered by the "no snitching" credo of gang culture, classify all four as unsolved and have been alerted to possible gang retaliation.

"None of this bodes well when we're looking to give kids a future," Kerlikowske said of the four deaths. "When we see this kind of an outcome, it's pretty devastating."

As the chief points out, the "no snitching" mentality has been a problem nationwide. FBI figures show that the homicide clearance rate dropped from 91 percent in 1963 — the first year records were kept in the manner they are now — to 61 percent in 2007, according to The Associated Press.

Unless this code of "no snitching" is destroyed or weakened, the homicide statistics in 2009 will pretty much be the same as the homicide statistics in 2008.
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