Yet on (April 17 Pomona’s) quiet and illusion of racial harmony was rudely jolted. Neighbors watched in horror as at least a dozen young men and women chased down on foot and then beat, kicked, stabbed and shot Marquis LeBlanc, an 18-year-old African American to death. Another dozen or so persons watched the attack and did not help LeBlanc or call police. Eyewitnesses identified the assailants as Latinos, some with suspected gang affiliations.
Though the police station was nearby, police did not arrive at the murder scene for nearly a half hour after the call went out. 
Police did not immediately contact LeBlanc’s parents, or ID him. They misidentified LeBlanc’s mother, Jessica Corde, on the coroner’s report. Corde claims police did not make a single call to the family to update them on the investigation, and rebuffed her many inquiries about it. 
Days after the killing police claimed they found a gun that was LeBlanc’s. There were also hints that he was a gang member. Police officials have been tight lipped about the case and say that release of information will compromise the investigation. The Le Blanc murder remains unsolved.
LeBlanc’s family minces no words. To them it is a case of a police department that cares little about the murder of a young Black. The family’s charge that the Pomona police are insensitive to the murder of LeBlanc is hardly new. Countless groups have marched, picketed and screamed loudly that police do little to catch killers in serial murder cases, the murders of homeless persons and of young Black males. The common thread is that the victims are poor, poorly educated, young, Black, often female with criminal records, and with few known family members. In times past crimes committed by Blacks against other Blacks were often ignored or lightly punished. The implicit message was that Black lives were expendable. Many studies still confirm that the punishment Blacks receive when the victim is White is far more severe than if the victim is Black. The clearance rate for murders in some poor, Black neighborhoods is far less than for murders in middle-class neighborhoods.
Police officials vehemently deny that they are any less diligent when it comes to nabbing the killers of Blacks than the killers of Whites. They blame the higher rate of unsolved murders of Blacks on higher case loads, tight budgets, limited personnel, and the refusal of witnesses to provide information. But it’s the unsolved murders of Blacks that fuel the perception that police take the loss of Black lives less seriously than that of Whites.