Locals are losing the ability to wish it away.
Seattle is a cocoon of racial harmony. Just ask them. Seattle has “fewer problems with racism than other cities,” says the blog So Seattle: “Ethnic tensions … seem less tangible than in other places.”1 Seattle may not have the day in, day out racial violence of a city like Chicago, or the peculiar racial lawlessness of small-town Peoria. But more and more people are paying attention to the increasingly visible and brutish mayhem that groups of black people are visiting on veterans, old people, young people, gay people, Asians, and even a pregnant woman.
And the local reaction: Most cannot believe it is happening.
Let’s start with seventeen-year-old Jessica Redmon-Beckstead. In December 2010 she was riding the bus with her boyfriend when five black girls started to taunt, attack, kick, punch, and rob her.
All the time they were laughing. One even complained about a broken fingernail.
“My girlfriend’s pregnant,” shouted the boyfriend as they punched her and kicked him in the face.
“We didn’t hit her in the stomach,” yelled one of the women. That got a few laughs. And the violence was all caught on video.2
According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the suspects were all riding the bus with free passes from Seattle Public Schools. Within a few weeks, all five were arrested, charged, and convicted.
SCAN ME!
VIDEO: Assaulting a Pregnant Woman
Six months later the baby was born healthy.
The day after the attack, King County Sheriff Sue Rahr rushed to assure the peace-loving people of Seattle this hyper-violent episode was an “isolated incident” and could have happened anywhere.
She was half right: It could happen anywhere, and often did. But it was far from an isolated incident. Even the local TV news reporters figured that out. Bus rider Gil Costello told the local Fox affiliate, violence on the bus “happens all the time. They just never report it.”
The Fox station reported a few months before, a disabled man was “terrorized” on a bus, then punched in the face and knocked out. All in black and white.3
SCAN ME!
VIDEO: Marine Attacked
At the end of 2011 an Iraq war veteran in a suburb of Seattle was riding the bus when he confronted several black passengers who were using foul language, including the dreaded “N” word. They attacked the Marine. He fought back and drove them off the bus. The shaken suspects were last seen quickly leaving the bus. No arrests were made.4
Let’s stay near the bus for one more attack. Make that two. It is hard to keep track. This one at the hands of a killer.
In the summer of 2011 Ondrell Harding beat a guy to death. Allegedly. Actually there was not much disagreement about that. At least five people saw it: The victim’s wife and preteen son, and, of course, a few members of Harding’s crew. The district attorney did not file charges because he could not figure out who started what, not who did what.
Four months later, Harding and five of his pals beat up another guy. They told police they were the ones who were attacked. That’s quite a back story: one lone guy at a bus stop attacks six black men. This time the DA filed charges. Harding got three months in jail.5
Maybe it would have helped if the DA had known about Harding’s rap songs he posted on his MySpace page. Kaegan Hamilton, a writer for the Seattle Weekly wrote that Harding was known as the rapper Doe Boy and that being:
far from repentant, Harding has bragged about his exploits in rap songs posted on his MySpace page. “When you look me in my eyes you see a coldblooded killer,” he sings in one verse. Another track has the ominous title “I Will Kill a Man.”6
True that.
Next.
Almost as sensational as the black mob beating up a pregnant teenager is the case of the Seattle teenager, who in 2011 was assaulted and tortured for several hours because he was white. And “they started bringing up the past—like slavery—being like, white people did this,” said the victim.
“They started bringing up the past - like slavery - being like, white people did this,” Shane said.
The attackers stripped off McClellan’s belt and started whipping his back.
“They said, ‘This is for what your people did to our people.’ They were like whipping me with my belt, my studded belt,” Shane recounts.
“They’re like, ‘Aw, white boy, what are you doing? You can’t hang out this late. What are you doing around here?’ They’re like, ‘White boy has no belonging - being out here at 2 a.m.’
“They targeted me for being white, and they made it very clear that’s why they were assaulting me,” Shane said.
The victim’s father said the attack was nothing short of hours of torture.
“Put a gun to the back of his head and told him if he said anything they were going to blow his head off while they sat there and burned him with cigarettes on the back of the neck,” he says.7
Both of the perpetrators were arrested, convicted, and sentenced. One to seven years, the other, five years and nine months. One was black, the other Asian. They said they were sorry.
No discussion of racial violence and lawlessness in Seattle is complete without a mention of the biggest and nastiest bit of racial business in the history of that town. An event that echoes today: The Seattle Mardi Gras Riot of 2001 where for three and half hours, tens of thousands of people watched helplessly, and police stood by quietly, as a race riot broke out.
SCAN ME!
VIDEO: Seattle Mardi Gras Riot
It even has its own Wikipedia page:
There were reports of widespread brawling, vandalism, and weapons being brandished. Damage to local businesses exceeded $100,000.
Much of the violence was perpetrated by black men against white revelers, and about 70 people were reported injured. Several women were sexually assaulted. One person, Kris Kime, died of injuries sustained during an attempt to assist a woman being brutalized.8
The Seattle News Weekly said the unsayable:_
For the millions who saw the photos or video, those images burned into the retina: gangs of feral youth beating, kicking, and pummeling male and female victims.
In almost all of the violent images of that night on TV and in the daily newspapers, the attackers were black and the victims were white. Thanks to our local media, this is the idea of the 2001 Mardi Gras riots that most people carry with them. The poster victim of Fat Tuesday, Kris Kime, was also white, and police now say the suspects in his murder are black. The fallout from all this is that many people assume the attacks were racially motivated.9
Whatever the “fallout,” the one person convicted of murder that night, Jerell Thomas, served eight years before getting out on a technicality. Within a few months, he was back in for assaulting his girlfriend.
Today, people make videos of the site, which includes a memorial plaque. For all the visible violence in Seattle, city officials are adamant that their town is safer. Just look at the statistics, they plead.
That is what happened to Nihan Thai in January 2012. He became a statistic when he was assaulted and robbed. Earlier this year, he talked to KING5, a local TV news station about the crime. He was walking home from the light rail station, (there’s that bus thing again):
I was literally ten steps away from the house. And I felt a hit on my right face and another hit on the back of my neck and on my lower back, and so as I was falling forward I felt hands grabbing my jacket and my bag,” said Thai.
Two months later, not far from where Thai was attacked, another man was grabbed from behind, robbed and beaten. His name was Danny Vega, and he died.10
Thai, like Vega, is Asian and openly gay. Before he died, Vega told police he’d been “attacked by three African-American males, all around 18 years of age.” It was the tenth such attack in that area in two months, all near the corner of Martin Luther King Way and Othello Street.11
After the attack, Thai went door to door to find out how widespread the problem wa
s. He was conducting his own crime survey.
Thai knocked on 49 doors. 32 people were home. How many of them had been victims of a crime since moving to the neighborhood? All but three.
Many victims told Thai they’d never reported the crimes to police.
“It happens to them so often that after 2 or 3 times they stopped reporting because they didn’t see any progress,” said Thai.
Thai’s survey was clearly unscientific, but it does raise the question--is crime going unreported in the south end?12
Thai learned that many in his neighborhood were victims, but most were not statistics. No arrests. No reports. It never happened.
24
PUBLIC TRANSIT
America’s First Green Crime Wave.
It is amazing how many of the more than five hundred examples of racial violence in this book are connected to public transit. I’ve alluded to some earlier, but here is a list of some attacks across the country, a good cross-section of what is happening in America’s public transit systems.
ATLANTA
In Atlanta, “hordes” of black people invaded MARTA trains, beat the occupants, and scrammed. No arrests. No suspects. The Atlanta Journal Constitution, which of course avoided reporting anything that could identify the race of the suspects, reported that:
The teens boarded the train, headed to Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, at the Garnett station a little after midnight seemingly intent on instilling fear. They succeeded.
“There was blood everywhere, people were hollering and screaming,” a witness told Channel 2 Action News. “We were intimidated. People were terrified. People were trying to run. But there was nowhere to run.”
Flight attendant Parker Stanea, 28, told officers a diminutive teen, no taller than 5′4″ and wearing a pink shirt, hit him with a soda can over the left eye. Stanea said the youths then pushed him to the ground and stole his wallet, according to an incident report filed by MARTA police.1
ST. LOUIS
In St. Louis, race riots in and around public transportation have become an art form. In 2008 there was a series of attacks on the MetroLink stations around the Delmar Loop. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on crime, race, and the MetroLink in 2008. They reported that “A group of teens and 20-somethings assaulted and robbed three teenagers at the Delmar station. Then, about 15 minutes later, the same group is believed to be responsible for attacking and robbing a family that was walking home from MetroLink’s Forest Park station after riding the train from Lambert-St. Louis airport.” The fear was that putting a light rail system in that passes through the inner city might “transport crime to the suburbs.” Interestingly, though, not once in the article is race mentioned.2
Local news reports said business owners told their customers to start carrying guns. Other business owners said the riots are ruining a thriving business district.
In 2011 there was another attack on the MetroLink. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch again reported:
The charges came after Griffin scuffled with a St. Louis city police officer breaking up a fight among a large group of people near the Delmar Metrolink stop Saturday night. The officer was treated at a hospital for minor injuries and released.
Police said about 100 people, mostly teens, were in the area but scattered as officers arrived to the 6200 block of Delmar Boulevard. The incident has prompted local police and city officials to look into ways to prevent unruly juveniles from disrupting the popular business strip.
Records show Griffin was also booked Sunday in connection with the Sept. 4 shooting death of Eric Marion, 34, of the 4500 block of Kingshighway Boulevard.
Those darn killers can be very unruly when they “scuffle.” Thank goodness they are paying attention to their green footprints in St. Louis by choosing to invest in light rail.
CHARLOTTE
We’ve already talked about Charlotte, North Carolina, and the shootings and mayhem there. Much of the violence seems to happen near the downtown public transit terminal. They figured it out down there in Charlotte:
Regardless of how all the questions get answered, this is clear: The Transportation Center has a problem. It has become a hangout for youths with time on their hands. Just as young people used to gather at Freedom Park and later at Eastland Mall to see friends and socialize, the center is drawing people who aren’t just passing through to catch a bus. Fights and other crowd-related crimes there are nothing new. Transit customers deserve better.3
BRONX
In 2011 Bronx prosecutors refused to call a vicious assault complete with racial slurs and cheering onlookers a hate crime. It happened on a subway in the early morning hours. Jason Fordell was coming home from selling his leather accessories at a nightclub and was “viciously assaulted and robbed on a subway train Sunday by four men who he says taunted him for being white.
“Police confirmed they are investigating the assault and robbery of Jason Fordell, 29, but have not labeled it a hate crime.”4
VENICE
A race riot in Venice, California, in 2011 featured fights and shootings. How many black people were there? The Los Angeles Times does not say specifically but called it “hordes” and an eyewitness described it as a “human tidal wave.” And of course no riot would be complete without laughing and taunting. Alexandria Thompson, a member of a neighborhood watch group called Venice311 said “some in the mob ran away backward so they could continue to watch the action. … It was all part of the event for them,” she said. “There’s a kind of free-for-all down here. Everybody is trying to get away with as much as they can.”5
SCAN ME!
VIDEO: People Run for Their Lives
Afterward mobs of people rushed to the bus station to flee the scene by the same way they got there.
How many people do we need before we call it a riot? I don’t know. How many angels fit on the head of a pin? Don’t know that either.
If you do, let me know.
SCAN ME!
VIDEO: Tweet Exchange
BOSTON
One thing I do not want to have happen is for the people of Boston to think we are ignoring their race riots. On Memorial Day, 2011, groups of more than one thousand black people gathered at Carson Beach for all the usual summer fun: flashing gang signs, beating up cops, random violence, and wanton destruction.
The Boston Globe knows the drill. They don’t mention race at all and even blame it on Facebook:
Police said the gang members are part of a group of more than 1,000 youths who have used social media sites like Facebook to plan unruly gatherings on the beach on three of the past four nights. The beach falls under the jurisdiction of the State Police, who have been unable to prevent the violence….
As the crowd broke up, hundreds of the unruly youths boarded the Red Line at JFK/UMass Station. Some went north; some went south.
According to Transit Police, a group of young people ended up at Downtown Crossing and started a fight in the station that spilled onto the street. Clashes were also reported at other stops.
Help me out here: If you are keeping count, how many riots is that: Well, we have racial violence at one beach on three days. Then to and from, those crazy young people were engaging in their summer revelry along the way.6
And they all took the train. Ain’t that grand.
Here’s a bonus for the Bean Town readers. In March 2013 a group of fifteen to thirty black people surrounded a bus at 1:15 a.m. and attacked the driver. “It is unclear what prompted the assault,” dutifully reported Metro.us.7
Police arrested one suspect after receiving a tip that he was bragging about his exploits on Twitter, said the Boston Globe. “My hands hurt from last night,” he said in a Tweet. His lawyer said although that may have been his account, there was no proof her client was the one who sent it out.
Prosecutors say he was part of “more than a dozen people who charged onto the bus and began assaulting the driver, while another group attacked him through the bus window,” said the Globe.8
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WASHINGTON, D.C.
No one knows what the two white women were doing on the Metro in that part of Washington, D.C. They “did not want any trouble,” they said. To the black mob that confronted them, threatened them, beat them, and robbed them, it was no trouble at all. The mob grabbed the girls’ iPhones, but not before the girls fought back to retrieve them—unsuccessfully. “Metro Transit Police Deputy Chief Ron Pavlik says his officers responded minutes after being notified. … Pavlik says two juveniles were arrested.” Yes, they were all black -- as the video showed -- but no, the report didn’t mention that.9
SCAN ME!
VIDEO: White Women Robbed on Metro
This mob calls themselves the 44th Street Crew in southeast Washington. For those not familiar with the different sections of Washington, that is not the lobbyist/media/functionary/dinner-party part of town.
Reporters at the Fox affiliate in Washington seemed surprised at the mob violence. But to people who ride the metro, it was just another day.
Metro police seem resigned to the violence and suggest that resistance is futile. Deputy Chief Pavlik said “There’s nothing worth fighting over and getting assaulted for. There are lot better ways to fight back.”
Some people devote entire blogs to the lawless Metro, where black mob violence is often seen but seldom reported. An anonymous poster to the blog Unsuck DC Metro gave a harrowing account of Metro violence that never made the Washington Post:
I have never been more disgusted or shocked by what I witnessed Saturday night at the Anacostia Metro. I went to pick up a family member at the Metro, and just as she was telling me about the fights (Yes, plural!) that happened on the Green Line train [between L’Enfant and Anacostia], we witnessed a group of 6 to 8 young black teenagers kick, stomp, punch and push a lone teenage girl.
White Girl Bleed A Lot Page 18