You gotta problem with that, Rivero?
Racial Mayhem at Carnivals:
Cotton Candy and Black Mob Violence
Every discussion of the epidemic of black mob violence at carnivals and fairs should begin with two words: Lori Lavorato.
We have already met her in this book, but she is worth remembering again because she was the police officer fired for telling the truth about racial violence at the Iowa State Fair.
But that was so long ago: Beat Whitey Night 2011 is now just a distant memory. Let’s flash forward to more than a dozen, more recent examples of black mob violence at fairs and carnivals all around the country, starting in Hampton, Virginia 2013.
Over Memorial Day weekend, five people were shot, one died, and two have been arrested for murder following an outbreak of black mob violence at the Hampton Coliseum Spring Carnival.
The shooting happened on Saturday night, the third day of the event, while police were in another part of the fairgrounds trying to quell a different case of black mob violence, one of several prior to the killing, some involving 50 to 100 people.
Officials cancelled the remainder of what was scheduled to be a 10-day affair. This was not the first episode of shooting or mob violence at the Fair: Last year, shots were fired but no one was killed.[657]
As is often the case, the readers tell the story the reporters cannot. Or will not.
“Every year this carnival attracts thugs and every year it is a breeding ground for violence,” said a reader of the Daily Press in Hampton. “Children want to attend the carnival and the low-lifes in this area are drawn to it for some reason. I would LOVE to be able to bring my children to the carnival but it's just not safe.[658]
And oh yeah, it’s been happening here a long time.
Some complained that anyone drawing attention to the fact that the fighters, the shooters, and the people shot were all black is racist: “A mother and father have lost their child, a sibling has loss his brother and the only thing some of you racist people can only say is negative things.”
Notice the script flip: The victims and witnesses are now the predators. And the predators? All of a sudden they are the victims.
Nice.
You have to decide, right here. Right now. That you are not going to let people do that anymore.
Are you in?
Others hoped that if the paper ignored the violence -- including the racial aspect of it -- that would make Hampton look like a better place: “It is probably a good idea for the daily papers to avoid writing about this nonsense and inform the community on positive attributes going on other places.”
Which is what other newspapers and TV news outlets do. And they put their audience in danger they had no idea even existed.
Hampton is 30 miles from Virginia Beach, where just a few weeks before, 40,000 black people rampaged through the beach town on a Saturday night, destroying property and creating violence.
On the other side of the state in Roanoke, the Drew Expo 2012 was forced to close their carnival early after it was the scene of black mob violence involving 500 people both in and out of the fair. No arrests were made. The Expo went off in 2013 with large-scale police presence that prevented large-scale violence that city officials said would cause them to abolish the Expo if it happened again.[659]
In the Detroit metro area, black mob violence struck at least three carnivals in May 2013. In Westland, according to ClickonDetroit.com:[660]
“Police say more than 100 teenagers -- mostly boys -- started a fight during the Westland Firefighters Charity Fund Carnival. It happened in a shopping center parking lot where the violence got so out of hand that it spilled over to neighboring businesses.”
Two weeks later at the St. Mary’s Polish Country Fair in neighboring Orchard Lake, hundreds of black people fought and destroyed property during the festival.
Some on video.[661]
Eddie Kulczyk said he “saw the video on clickondetroit.com. Of all of the fights, definitely didn't look like they were Polish people causing the trouble.”
"It seems that every community has the same issue,” said Westland city councilman Bill Johnson. “It's just not safe.” [662] He called for a ban on the carnival.
In Taylor, another suburb of Detroit, several fights broke out at the Gibraltar Trade Center carnival at the beginning of May. Several people reported hearing gunshots but the police chief denied anything like that happened.
“My daughter and her friends went to this carnival and I heard someone was stabbed along with gunshots fired, they were running into the building to get away from them,” said Teresa Lynne J. In the comments section of the News Herald.
“My son was there and he said that there was also gunfire and that he and his girlfriend were running for their lives!,” said another parent.[663]
“Numerous people have posted hearing gunshots, as well as having family working at Heritage Hospital, and reporting how busy they were due to the fight at GTC,” posted another reader. “So, to say no one was injured, I believe is a complete falsehood, and a case of the mayor trying to cover how dangerous it really is there.”
The State Fair that probably got the most attention for racial violence was Milwaukee in 2011. Hundreds of black people roamed in and out of the fairgrounds, beating up white people at will.
Which was not too much different than what 50-100 black people did just three weeks before when they looted a Milwaukee convenience store, then, two blocks away, assaulted several people on an Independence Day holiday picnic.
“White Girl Bleed a Lot,” said one of the attackers, standing and laughing over her victim.
Milwaukee is also the site of frequent and intense black mob violence at the Juneteenth festivals, local malls and even St. Patrick’s Day parades.
The newspapers and local TV news rarely identify the culprits by race. But this time, they had little choice: The people on the 911 calls sure did. Here are a few: Milwaukee State Fair 911 calls:[664]
The editors at the local paper promised they would get to the bottom of it: “This is our fair, a showcase and celebration of the state, and reports of African-American teenagers randomly beating up white fair-goers - similar to attacks last month in the Riverwest neighborhood - are shocking. We simply can't let this happen again. ”[665]
That turned out not to be true.
But 2011 was such a long time ago. Let’s get back to 2014, April in Wyoming, Michigan. The local press called it a brawl. Victims called it assault. [666]
“I was yelling, ‘Please stop, please leave me alone.’ If you watch the video, you can hear me screaming for my life,” one victim said to Wood TV 8. [667]
The victim’s mother saw it on video. She did not call it brawl: “The victim’s mother Janice said she was surprised her daughter survived after watching the video. “They were stomping her like a piece of meat, and you can hear the laughter and the excitement. And she wasn’t the only victim that night,” she said. “I had to ask myself how she lived through it.”
Good question. But no one connected to her daughter’s beating was arrested. So we will never know. But some of the locals know one thing that the press there will never say:
“This was Beat Whitey Night, just like the Wisconsin State Fair or the Denver Attacks or the Atlanta attacks or the Philadelphia attacks or the attacks at the Ohio State Fair....The video shows the race of the perps.”
Over in Sandusky, Ohio, home of the Cedar Point amusement park, police arrested 16 black people in June of 2014 for having a riot -- not in the park, but in their living spaces after the park was closed.
Charged with aggravated rioting were Lawanda, Cashia, Laon, Marquise, Kyreese, Dajon, Ja’Quan and a few others. [668]
Just a few weeks before, a mob of 50 to 100 black people rampaged through the annual Football Fair in Pennsville, New Jersey.
They beat parents, they beat kids, they beat coaches. They destroyed property. And attacked police too.
Two cops ende
d up in the hospital, and seven people were arrested. Some on video.[669]
And a local reporter called the Willie Shields talk radio show on WLVT radio to complain that I had injected raced into it. When race had nothing to do with it, he said.
Willie handled it. We don’t have to worry about that.
As black mob violence at carnivals go, the 2014 racial mayhem at the Florida State Fair in Tampa was not that big of a deal.
Sure hundreds of black people creating mayhem. On video. Police were attacked. Property destroyed. Fair-goers beaten. Venders assaulted. Cell phones stolen. An old lady in a wheelchair robbed. People jumping fences and refusing to pay for rides. The fair closed early. And most of the media glossed over most of it. [670]
Despite the fact that officials even said they even expected it.
The local daily paper in Tampa carried a story about a Trayvon Martin commemoration rally in Miami -- his birthday was over the weekend -- but nothing about the widespread racial violence at the Fair in its own backyard.
Like most of the examples from the previous chapter, the local media in Tampa reported the violence piecemeal: Some said it was just a few teens fighting. Others reported the violence in greater detail: hundreds of teens attacking police, fair-goers and workers. But absent one fact: The central organizing feature of the crowd committing the mayhem. They were black.
Many people who attended the fair noticed the omission, and thought it important enough to let others know too:
“The article failed to mention all the facts: Black males were the ones starting and committing the crimes,” said Annie Penn at the message board of the local ABC affiliate in response to it story. “I was there!”
Another fair-goer filled in a few more blanks for the ABC story:
“This is a lie,” said Jamie Piaskowski about the sanitized version of the story. “I was there in the midst of it all. The carnies had to move tables to protect their vendor trailers and people. There was more than a few kids. This was a few hundred kids in a mob mentality. It was a very dangerous situation. It makes me sick to see the news and the police whitewash this.”
Ever get the impression the natives are getting restless?
The mayhem at the Florida State Fair started on a Friday with free tickets for Students Day. Amazing how often that free stuff is associated with black mob violence: Free tickets, free bus rides, free phones …
By evening, assaults and property damage were breaking out all over the fairgrounds.
David Donohue contacted WTSP news after he saw the other news reports because he wanted people to know what really happened was more than just a few fights. “We were standing in front of a ride when all of a sudden a rush came by and I got knocked up against a booth,” Donohue said.
His two children described how they were punched in the face, pushed down, and stepped on. “They trampled me,” said Mason Donohue, “then another guy came and stomped on my chest.”
Deputy sheriffs ejected 99 people for fighting. The Tampa Bay Times reports deputies were outnumbered and overwhelmed. “Approximately 200 deputies could not handle the chaos, sheriff's officials said. A commander with 30 years of experience, Maj. Tom Feeney, said it's the worst thing he has seen in law enforcement.”
One deputy was trying to break up a fight when the crowd turned on him.
“Several juveniles jumped on him,” the police spokesman told WTSP.“They were stealing candy apples from concession stands and throwing them at our deputies.”[671]
Three hours after the 99 “teens” were kicked out, one of them was killed trying to cross a nearby interstate freeway. And now, we learn from the Sheriff’s Department, that violence at the fair is something they expect because it happens so much.
The Tampa Bay Times reported that the person who died was “Andrew Joseph III, one of 99 people ejected that day, which is not uncommon on the first Friday of the fair,” said Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Debbie Carter. "There are usually a lot of young high school kids that start fights with each other and cause problems." [672]
Usually? This is the first time at the Florida State Fair that officials have ever said violence was a regular problem they could predict.
Maybe next year they can sell tickets.
And oh yeah, that has been happening here a long time.
The Tampa Bay Times reported that next year, the sheriff’s department is going to notify the several black groups including the NAACP that violence and theft and mayhem were not acceptable at the state fair.
The newspaper did not say why the sheriff’s department singled out black groups.
Seven Days in June 2013:
Starting with the pregnant woman.
A Dayton mother of three who was nine months pregnant is dead after she was shot in the abdomen during an episode of black mob violence.
Her child survived and is reported to be in critical condition.
The incident began when Dayton police broke up a large fight involving a mob of black women. Soon after, the crowd formed again. And once again fighting broke out, this time involving as many as 100 people. Gunfire was exchanged.[673]
It is not known whether gunshot victim, Dalyne Foster, was an active participant in the violence -- or whether she was just an observer. Either way, she died at the hospital. Her brother told WHIO TV news the child was due any day.[674]
The Dayton incident is just one in a series of episodes of black mob violence episodes around the country that week. Some on video. Some involving guns. Others involving bats and bricks and even a fork and large kitchen knives. All unreported as part of a pattern racial violence.
In Columbia, Missouri, three people were shot over the weekend and the action was caught on tape. The video show a crowd of 30 black people crossing the street and beginning to surround a silver car. Shots rang out. People ran. Police are not saying much more than that because they want to protect the victims from retaliation.[675]
On the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 250 black people at a high school graduation party over the weekend fought with bats and one man brandished a gun. According to Wicked Local Cambridge: “He was looking to shoot somebody,” the doorman reportedly told police. “He did not say anything to anyone. He was just standing there with the gun at his side.”[676]
Earlier in June, a police officer in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania was hospitalized with bites and bruises after trying to break up an episode of black mob violence. The “riot” happened after a funeral when a local woman was arrested and placed in the back of a squad car.[677]
More than 100 black people stormed the car and released the woman. They then attacked the police officer who tried to stop them. According to the Delaware County Times:
“During the struggle, (a policeman) was knocked down, scratched and bitten numerous times. Someone in the crowd took the officer’s night stick out of his belt while someone else punched him so hard his contact lenses were knocked underneath his eyelids.”
One man was arrested for inciting a riot after“egging on the crowd” to get the cops, said the paper. Police issued an all-county call for assistance from other departments. Three of the rioters were arrested.
For the mathematically inclined, that understates the crime by more than 97 percent. That same weekend about 100 miles to the south in Salisbury, Maryland, “eight black males who are about 20 years old are wanted in an assault of two people,” reported the local Gannett paper at delmarvaNow.com. The eight allegedly smashed car windows and stole a cell phone.[678]
That is at least the second such incident in Salisbury in two months. “This seems to be a regular occurrence, especially in Salisbury... I could add more but it would only get censored…” said one of the commenters in a story about the earlier episode.
And oh yeah, that has been happening here for a long time.
Sixty miles away in Dover, Delaware in the beginning of June, almost 100,000 NASCAR fans enjoyed the FedEx 400 without a hitch. Early the next morning
, after the race, a crowd of 150 black people was kicked out of the adjoining casino for fighting. One person was reported stabbed, but police could not find him.
The fight continued in the parking lot soon after, and it took police 30 minutes to get the mob violence under control. One person was hit with a crowbar. Police had to use a taser to subdue another. Four people were arrested, including two for felony riot and one for being a felon in possession of a gun.[679]
This was at least the second large-scale episode of black mob violence in the last two years. According to the local police: [680]
“Dover Downs Security Cameras captured a large fight in the parking lot on video. The video, which was taken on September 18, 2011, depicted a large group of black males subjects gathered in the lot at approximately 0326 AM. Two subjects begin fighting at which time a suspect, later identified as Phillip Francis, BM 29, removes a rifle from a vehicle and conceals same under a jacket.
Police say many of the participants came from a black college a few hundred yards from the casino. And oh yeah, that has happened a few times since then.
In Chattanooga, Tennessee in June 2013, black mob violence is a long-standing tradition at the Riverbend music festival, say dozens of people on Twitter. One black person from the area, @ShuntiFBaby, said because “the black going just to fight, THERE WILL BE NO RIVERBEND NEXT YEAR.”
This example of Riverbend violence on video from 2013 shows a mob of black people surrounding and punching and kicking a white man. No one was arrested.[681]
In Peoria in June 2013, police responding to a “large” group of black people fighting found one man who had been stabbed in the eye with a fork. According to the Peoria Journal-Star, the victim would not give police any details of the assault.[682]
In Milwaukee, four people were arrested following a large fight at “Juneteenth” party in memory of the end of slavery. [683] That is down from more than 50 arrests last year, and the large-scale violence and mayhem of the years before that. Much of it on video.[684]
'Don't Make the Black Kids Angry': The hoax of black victimization and those who enable it. Page 33