On April 4, a disgruntled bimbo attacked art teacher Jolita Berry at Baltimore’s Reginald F. Lewis High School. The attack was filmed on a cell phone camera and posted on the Internet.

Exactly one week later, three men were shot on a street in West Baltimore. Anthony Lamont Izzard Sr., only 26, was fatally wounded. His funeral was this past Monday. But if Izzard’s relatives, loved ones and friends thought he was going to be buried in peace, they were sadly mistaken.

Somebody or somebodies fired at least eight shots outside Unity United Methodist Church, where Izzard’s funeral was being held, sending mourners scurrying inside the church to escape the fusillade. Two men were wounded, one fatally.

The common thread that ties together the attack on Berry and what amounts to a desecration of a funeral can be described in three words: Lack of respect.

Apparently, that’s a common affliction down here in the city that’s been called Bodymore, Murderland. At one time, young people in this town had the notion of respect hammered into them: Respect your elders, respect your teachers, respect the pastor of your church, and, Lord knows, respect a funeral.

Rev. Napoleon Rush is the pastor of Unity United. According to a story in the Baltimore Sun, the shooting wasn’t just about a criminal act. It was about respect. Listen to how Rush described the scene just before the shooting, as reported in the Sun.

“I noticed a lot of things that was out of order," Rush said of the overflow crowd, many of them young and, according to him, "in the drug life." Instead of sitting quietly in the pews, many mourners were walking in and out of the church, according to Rush, and not abiding by his calls for order. "Most times, when a minister speaks a certain thing, people will respect(emphasis mine) that, but there was none of that ... Even when we was saying, 'Don’t come to the casket,' they was still coming to the casket.”

Somehow, black folks have managed to raise a crop of younguns who don’t respect anything. Not their parents. Not their teachers. Not even the minister trying to conduct a homegoing service for the deceased. Yes, Rush did say some of those in attendance appeared to be “in the drug life” (Izzard himself had been convicted of drug dealing.). What, some of you may ask, can you expect from people involved in the criminal lifestyle?

Oh, a hell of a lot more.

When I was growing up, even black criminals respected their elders, teachers and the clergy. My two first cousins, George Floyd Jr. and Louis Floyd, spent the better part of their lives in and out of either state or federal prisons. But whenever they visited our house in between their stints on lockdown, they never failed to call my mother anything but Aunt Ruth.

I remember the night a local neighborhood tough who went by the nickname of Sharp came to St. Pius V parish and beat the captain of our Catholic Youth Organization senseless. The pastor of St. Pius broke up the fight. I can still remember Sharp’s words to the CYO captain. “You’re lucky,” Sharp told him. Then, pointing to the priest, he added, “I respect this man here.”

Yes, the “R” word was all the rage back then. Sharp would meet his death -- at the tender age of 16 -- soon after the incident when he had the hubris to think his switchblade knife was a match for a handgun, but even a hardcore thug like him respected the clergy. Can you imagine how the incident would have played out today?

“Priest trying to break up fight shot by homicidal gang banger,” the headline might read. It would make the perfect companion for the headline the Baltimore Sun ran about the shooting at the funeral: “One man dead, one hurt as gunfire disrupts service.”

Baltimoreans have had the agony of reading similar headlines in the last two years. There was the one about the father who was shot after he asked two disrespectful teens to leave his daughter’s “Sweet 16” birthday party. That father didn’t make it. Then there was the man in his 20’s who was shot by a 13-year-old because the man had the nerve to protest when the belligerent teen threw a bottle at him. That man didn’t make it either.

Of course, there are some black folks who probably figure the adults are at fault, like the person who made comments on the BlackAmericaWeb.com message board last week that all but justified the attack on Jolita Berry.

For defenders of such youth, I have only one request: If you can’t convince our young folks to respect us, can you at least ask them not to assault or shoot us?