They got the gun. Saved the girl. Six people were arrested. Twice as many were Tasered. The Freire family went to the hospital.
What is it with Florida? In Pensacola, Jack Crawford answered his door only to get cracked on the head with a bat. “About 8:45 p.m., three teenage males knocked on the door.” As soon as Crawford opened the door, “Wham! Split my head open,” Crawford said. “So I shot him and another guy.” Of the three intruders, one was white. “Crawford said he wasn’t too rattled by the attack, and he still felt comfortable staying in the home.” Crawford is not in danger of prosecution because of Florida’s “Stand your Ground” law.9
In North Carolina, four black men broke into the home of C.L. McClure. He was in the basement when he saw a “young black male walk by the door.” McClure thought it was his grandson at first. It wasn’t. They restrained the seventy-six-year-old man and his wife with duct tape, robbed them, and took off.
McClure escaped and gave chase, gun in hand. He caught them and, thinking one of the looters was reaching for a gun, killed him. Police soon had two others in custody. After checking for the presence of anyone in the area wearing an electronic ankle monitor, they found the fourth nearby in the bushes.10
SCAN ME!
VIDEO: Duct Tap Bandits
Another good shoot, said local prosecutors.
In Detroit in 2011 “a Detroit pizza delivery man turned the tables on three would be crooks.” The black men ambushed the driver. He killed one. Police caught the others. The delivery man had a permit to carry a concealed weapon. “The manager at the pizza shop told Action News … many of his other drivers” have permits too. Every year hundreds of delivery drivers are robbed. Over the last several years, hundreds have been killed. Most do not carry guns. That is why the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls it one of the most dangerous jobs in the country.11
Back in Florida, John Lee, a father of four, was on his way to work at Sam’s Club when four black men demanded his money and then opened fire on him. “I got my concealed weapons permit a few years ago,” he said, “hoping I would never have to use it.” But he did. And it’s a good thing he did. He drove the thieves away but not before taking three rounds in his arms, leg, and abdomen.
“If I didn’t have that gun on me, I would not be talking to you right now,” he told the CBS affiliate in Palmetto Bay. “They would have finished me off.” The men escaped, one bleeding.12
In Avondale, Pennsylvania, a group of black men broke down the door of an apartment only to find seventy-seven-year-old Clyde Tucker waiting inside with a gun. He was “not afraid to defend his home with lethal force.” He shot one of the thugs, but they got away.13
In 2010 in Atlanta three black people attempted a home invasion robbery on Dexter Tucker. Dexter is actor and comedian Chris Tucker’s brother, and a smart man. He defended his property with his gun, shooting one of the perpetrators in the leg; the other two ran off. All three ended up being arrested. And the District Attorney announced almost immediately the shooting was justified.14
No one knows how often guns are used for self-defense. According to a Cato Institute white paper called Tough Targets, the number of crimes thwarted by guns every year ranges anywhere from tens of thousands to as high as two million. The work of author John Lott is the best place to go for more of this kind of information.15
Lots of journalists could use it. Like two reporters at the Fox affiliate in Philadelphia who seemed heart sick at the news that some suburban folks were buying guns. Following up on a report of a June 2011 flash mob of twenty black people at a local department store, one reporter explained how “people are talking about how afraid they are of being caught in the path one of these flash mobs … and they want to be ready.” The local police department was receiving ten to twenty applications a week to carry a gun. “People now are fearful and carrying guns because of children,” said the local police chief.16
Those who expected any congratulations for making their neighborhoods safer had another thing coming.
“I couldn’t believe when I heard this one earlier,” said the worried anchor. “It sounds like a ‘I’m going to get them before they get me’ mentality.” Before he had a chance to explain why defending yourself was bad, the reporter in the field confirmed that it sounded unbelievable. “But law enforcement says believe it. It is a nightmare in the making.” Of course the nightmare they are talking about is people protecting themselves. “I talked to a number of private citizens tonight who said they used to keep their guns only inside their home,” said the reporter. “Now they are strapped every day, just about everywhere they go.”17
Back at the studio, the anchor looked concerned not for victims, but for the predators. Still wondering what got into those crazy suburban people.
Steve Kates knows. He is a Phoenix area talk show host and gun safety instructor who says more and more people are taking personal responsibility for their own safety—and that is the way it should be. “Every state has its own laws regulating how you can carry and use a weapon when you feel threatened,” Kates said. “So you have to know what they are. But having said that, a lot more people are feeling a lot less safe. With good reason. So having a firearm and knowing how to use it is more important today than ever.”
30
SPORTS
This could be its own reality show.
Every sports reporter knows how many sports reporting careers were ended with an indiscrete racial comment. The sports guys are walking on egg shells.
So when racial violence erupts in the world of sports, reporters head for the hills, rather than report it and risk heading for the unemployment line.
There are lots of examples: Let’s look at a few:
In October 2011 in Hancock County, Georgia, when thirty black people beat up a white football coach the media did not call it for what it essentially was: a race riot. The Associated Press called it an “ambush.” A local TV station said a “fight broke out.” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said “the brawl left Daniel, the Warren County head coach, hospitalized with head injuries” (emphasis mine). Maybe the coach attacked the mob, instead of the other way around. I doubt it. They beat him with helmets and left the coach with several broken bones in his face.1
We know it was not a race riot because we would have read about that in the newspapers. Right? Wrong.
The Hancock riot began when one of the Hancock County coaches sent threatening and vulgar messages to players of the opposing team the week before the game.
“Better stay yo stupid [expletive] in [Warren County] B4 som1 get really hurt.”
After the fight, Dishman said Blount told a Warren County player via an 11:22 p.m. text that he had no idea why the fight occurred:
“How th[e] [expletive] I kno[w] about yall bull[expletive]. Yu started this [expletive] last week. Remember yu started this.”2
Down in Sarasota, Florida, the Gators, a black high school football team, objected to a call from a white referee. So they calmly argued their case? Not in this book. Instead they attacked him. First the coaches were arguing and following the ref around the field. Then “things got really ugly, with a Gators player rushing in and tackling the referee with a full-speed take-down hit.” A few dozen players and coaches started kicking the ref while he was down. It was “one of the most disgraceful things I have ever seen,” Huskies Coach Mike Cody said. Some people were arrested. Next.3
World Star Hip Hop is a great place to find these. Here’s one more from 2012. Not sure of the location. A coach hits a referee, and other refs immediately declare the game a forfeit. The players jump up and down, celebrating their victory.
Meanwhile, other coaches and adults connected to the losing team made a bee line for the ref. As they surround him, one jumps in and punches him in the head. Lots of turmoil, Lots of parents on the video gathering their children for a hasty exit.4
The ref escaped. But after the fracas, at least two members of the mob are seen on the video high-fiving each other
with even more glee than the grade school children who had just won.
In 2012 Wilmington, Delaware, saw one of the worst cases of violence at a sporting event. Three black men assassinated a coach and neighborhood leader while about to address a crowd at a soccer match. With his accomplices at his side, Otis Phillips “waited until Curry had grabbed the microphone before he sauntered up, tapped him on the back, and opened fire point blank six times.” Apparently Curry had witnessed a murder four years earlier and Phillips was trying to silence the witness. No one will ever never know how much havoc these three gangsters intended on wreaking on the rest of the crowd. Before anyone found out, several spectators pulled out their guns and returned fire, killing one of the assassins and driving off the other two. They were soon captured.
Police found shells from fourteen different guns, but curiously, of the hundreds of people at the field that day, not one of them got a look at the Good Samaritan gunners. Let’s just say the chances were slim they had gun permits.
SCAN ME!
VIDEO: White Referee Attacked
SCAN ME!
VIDEO: North Carolina Hoops Fest
In 2011 in Dallas, a crowd of black people flash robbed a convenience store, as I mentioned in chapter 16. Before the robbery, though, the mob was at a local high school football game. When the game ended witness Gwen Calloway saw a “mob of kids coming.” They were chasing some other kids. “They attacked one in front of Love’s and threw him on Calloway’s car, cracking the windshield.”5
If there are any Jesuits out there, perhaps you could help me wrestle with this philosophical question: was this a sports beat down or just a regular old mob of black people beating someone up?
Until smarter people than me figure it out, I will assume it was a spillover from the football game and call it a sports beat down.
And oh yeah, it was dangerous at the game. The people were out of control, and some folks got hurt. “DISD officials said safety at the facility is the district’s top priority… but Calloway, she wants more security at future games, and plans to take her concerns to the district’s next board meeting.6
In Detroit we already talked about the frequency and intensity of racial violence and shootings and beatings at football games. So much so, that a newspaper columnist wrote about it when he attended a game that did not break out in violence.
Most games in Detroit are not held at night. But every once in a while some brave school administrator decides to try it again: When that happens, more often than not, they are reminded why they had to cancel night games in the first place: Black mob violence.
In September 2012 Wayne State University in Detroit hosted a football game between two local rivals. The game had to be stopped when hundreds of black people started fighting in several places throughout the stadium.
The video says it all.7
Racial violence is part of the landscape. Expected. Unremarkable. Not worth talking about and often serving as entertainment. That was the case in Orlando in March 2012 at a high school all-star basketball game.
Players, fans, friends and family had a big scrap in a cafeteria. As they fought and tossed chairs and threats and haymakers, others in the dining area went about their business, drinking orange juice, and shouting “World Star.”8
Some like to point at sporting events as favorite places for white racial violence. They are usually talking about the celebrations that follow sports’ championships. That is weak.
31
RIVERHEAD
This chapter starts out strange but ends up truly bizarre.
And a quote for the Journalism Hall of Fame.
I don’t know why in July 2012, 750 black people were fighting and rioting on the streets of Riverhead, a small hamlet near the Hamptons.
I don’t even know who counted them.
Maybe they were upset at the light sentence recently handed down to the man who broke into rap mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs’ nearby home. Or maybe they were exercising their right “peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” That’s from the US Constitution for those of you who weren’t paying attention.
Or maybe that is just how they roll in Riverhead.
Six weeks before, a local attorney broke the local code of silence to reveal other examples of mob violence in a town the newspapers are desperate to portray as bucolic and upscale:
This past month, we read about a murder at Route 58 shopping center and at least two riots: a brawl in that same shopping center, and another melee across the street from Town Hall, where the alleged perpetrator apparently threatened bystanders with an assault weapon.1
The local newspaper barely reported on the July rumble. And the police are not saying much. But we do know that the local police received multiple calls and had to request assistance from five neighboring police agencies to break up “numerous fights over the course of two hours.”2
Neighbors said there was a graduation party that ended at 11:00 p.m., but the crowds of hundreds of people kept loitering in the street acting disorderly and blocking traffic until well after midnight. They were asked by the police to leave, but they refused to do so. “A neighbor named Hazel said people gather on the street corners from time to time, but ‘it’s never been like that.’”3
No one got hurt. No one got arrested. None of the “teens” involved in the “party” were quoted in several news accounts. In the hours following the riot the tweets and retweets completed the picture:
“didn’t know riverhead was poppin like thtt ; last nite qot real lol,” @BitchIMtattedd
“Riverhead is deadass GHETTO ..im ashamed too say i actually live here,” @musicnmarijuana.
“was in riverhead actin hell of nice last night lol,” @SelfMadeRozayy
“that you were,” @JanetDoeTho.
“Puddin party all on the news & in riverhead local … shit was live,” @bluewavesboy.
Some residents of Riverhead were unhappy that the culprits were identified by race on the message boards.
“Why does race always have to play a part in any discussion in this newspaper?” Missi Brit asked the Riverhead News-Review. “If you had your info correct. The article said youths, meaning black, white, and Latino youths.”
That response drew scorn from neighbors who witnessed the melee. “I saw what happened last night,” said Resident User. “It was not the ‘diverse’ crowd you suggest.”4
All the posters on Twitter were black as well.
Riverhead local news reported a similar brawl in the same neighborhood in 2011. It happened after the Fourth of July fireworks. Hundreds of people fighting and disturbing the peace. Two women were stabbed. Two women were arrested. Both black.5
Police had trouble breaking it up, but at least they didn’t have to call for help.
In September 2011 in nearby Southampton, police had to use pepper spray to break up a similar riot involving three hundred black people—the largest such disturbance in the history of this village of four hundred people.
As for the man who broken into Diddy’s home, he was sentenced to time served and is required to stay away for five years from Riverhead.
Two days after I posted the original story on WND.com, the editor of the Riverhead newsletter jumped all over it. Despite the news accounts from other reporters, despite the calls I made to police and city council members, she said none of it happened. She admitted that “the party grew to unanticipated proportions,” but she claims there “was no lawlessness. There was no mob.” And here is how she knew:
“I know this even though I wasn’t there — because there were no arrests. If there had been lawlessness and violence, there would have been arrests.”6
At times like this, times of monumental … uh, innocence, a reasonable man has only one response. To quote the Godfather:
Michael: My father is no different than any powerful man, any man with power, like a president or senator.
Kay Adams: Do you know how naive you sou
nd, Michael? Presidents and senators don’t have men killed.
Michael: Oh. Who’s being naive, Kay?
In the meantime, someone notify the Journalist Hall of Fame. This quote is a keeper.
32
TRAYVON MARTIN PAYBACK
Revenge for Trayvon. And other racial violence that made the news.
We do not need to rehash L’Affaire de Trayvon here. But the shooting of the Skittle-toting teenager provoked a backlash of black mob violence around the country that is much less well known. Let’s start in Gainesville, Florida, home of the Gators.
At a downtown restaurant near Bo Diddley Community Plaza, just hours after a local demonstration calling for justice for Travyon, a fifty-year-old felon snatched a purse. The woman’s boyfriend took off running, caught him, and wrestled him to the ground. “Police say that is when the incident turned racial,” says a local NBC television news reporter.
SCAN ME!
VIDEO: The Incident Turned Racial
“Some members of the crowd shouted ‘Trayvon!’ and at least three members of the crowd began stomping on the hands” of the Good Samaritan trying to force him to let go of the suspect.” said a police spokeswoman.1
The purse snatcher was desperate and down on his luck and had just gotten out of prison, we learned. As you can see in the video link above, a bystander explained the rest: “Right now there is a lot of racial tension going on because of that. And then when you have a guy just getting out of prison and he just happens to be black, all that does is intensify the tension.”
Good Lord, I do not have the slightest idea what that means. But I do know how to count. If a mob of twenty-five people is standing around while three people from the mob beat someone up, the papers always report that the crime involved just three people.
While the other twenty-two who did not help, who did not dial 911, who encouraged the violence are not a part of the story.
White Girl Bleed A Lot Page 23