White Girl Bleed a Lot (13 page)

Sometimes you do need a weatherman.

Now this is actually a bit strange. Speed Street in Charlotte is a several day party that precedes the annual Coca Cola 600, a NASCAR event.

The last time I checked Jay Z and Kanye were not singing the praises of white guys driving around all day making left turns. Alright, I have never actually checked it out. But Speed Street had something for everyone. It was supposed to be a way city officials in Charlotte, North Carolina, could show off how well they could handle large crowds. The Democratic National Convention was coming there in 2012, and even though the convention deal had already been signed, they were eager to show potential visitors that Charlotte was a safe gathering place for America’s liberals.

It didn’t turn out that way. The police got quite a workout. “They made 44 arrests -- 33 adults and 11 juveniles … they included eight arrests on drug-related charges; seven for intoxication and disruptive behavior; and five for disorderly conduct.” Thirty to sixty thousand black people rioted, fought, stole, vandalized, and killed a person.
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Twenty-one-year-old Alphonso Spears, who was arrested on misdemeanor charges of resisting a public officer and disorderly conduct, said police tactics escalated the atmosphere. He told the
Observer
he was walking around looking for his cell phone when an officer ordered him to keep moving. “I said, ‘Don’t put your hands on me.’”

“Everybody was just out there having fun, drinking, a couple of people screaming this, screaming that. When [police] set the mood, then everyone erupted.”

Eighteen-year-old Laquan Hoe also said he was wrongly arrested. Hoe said police stopped him for obstructing a sidewalk when he was waiting for a ride. When he tried to explain to the officer what he was doing, the officer said, “What’d you say?”

“And he locked me up,” said Hoe. “I didn’t know you could be arrested for not walking on a sidewalk.”
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The video tells one story. The newspapers and city officials blamed it on the youth.

In the end, one person was fatally shot last weekend, another hospitalized with a gunshot wound and 70 arrested uptown in one of the city’s largest mass arrests in recent memory.

On Tuesday, Charlotte-Mecklenburg police Chief Rodney Monroe said unrest that followed the Food Lion Speed Street festival caused panic, but insisted officers “never lost control of the uptown.”

“Did we have fights? Yeah, we had fights,” Monroe said. “Did we have disturbances? Yeah, we had disturbances. … But at no time did we ever feel that we lost control of the center city.”

But eyewitnesses, business managers and others interviewed by the
Observer
described a chaotic scene late Saturday night and early Sunday morning.

On North Tryon Street, more than 50 young people overran a convenience store, “taking everything they could put their hands on,” one worker said. All of them escaped before police arrived, he said.

On College Street, security guards at Fuel Pizza called police multiple times to report “a dozen fights in the streets,” owner Zach Current said.

Some 25,000 to 30,000 people had congregated along Trade and College streets when the trouble started.
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In a way, he was right. After bail was posted, many of those arrested had an explanation about what started the riot: The cops did it, of course.

In the fall of 2011 Charlotte announced it was stepping up its riot training in preparation for the Democratic National Convention in 2012. The Democrats had just announced they were canceling an event at the Speedway and instead were going to send their delegates to the Uptown district.

Nice. Don’t forget to take lots of videos.

Let’s head back out to the Midwest. This time the Ground Zero of racial violence, media complicity, and official denial: Chicago.

The Second City has it all: Repeated and visible racial violence.
Denials. Even a Police Chief who blames Sarah Palin.
Really, he does.

I
s Chicago worse than Philly?

Known as the Second City, Chicago does not have to stand behind anyone when it comes to racial violence and denial. Chicago doesn’t have the large violent crowds of black people roaming their downtown that characterize the Philadelphia racial violence. (They are getting there, don’t worry.) Chicago’s mobs are smaller, but the incidents are more widespread. And hidden, so let’s call that part a wash. But when it comes to the media and public officials denying, obfuscating and even condoning the behavior, Philadelphia is the second city … way, way, way behind Chicago.

Racial violence is so common in downtown Chicago that now some people call it the “Chicago Intifada.” The flash robs and mobs and black gang violence started soon after Rahm Emmanuel replaced Richard Daley as mayor in February 2011. Seriously, that’s probably just one of those cosmic coincidences.

In April 2011 seventy black people stormed a McDonald’s, creating what newspapers call a “mystery” disturbance. And
what cops call nothing at all. Even the
Chicago Sun-Times
had a problem with that when they learned about it months later:

“Both Chicago Police Department and Campus Safety believe this activity is related to the same group of individuals who have attempted to create havoc in the area before,” wrote Robert Fine, the director of campus security for Loyola and a veteran Chicago cop. “In February, we alerted you to a similar incident in which these ‘Flash Mob Offenders’ allegedly committed thefts within local retail stores around the Water Tower Campus community. The offenders exit the Chicago Red Line stop, they go to various shops or restaurants, usually clothing stores, and then storm the stores, taking as many items as they can carry. The incidents seem to occur most often on weekends, between 5 p.m. and 11 p.m.”

Chicago Police say Sunday was no big deal.

“There was a large crowd,” said a CPD spokesman. “Officers of the 18th District went and dispersed them. There were no arrests.”

And the restaurant closing for three hours?

“They voluntarily closed.”

The no arrests part is not surprising — kids hit a store en masse and steal all they can grab, then flee. You can’t arrest everybody.

What they were doing at McDonald’s, where merchandise is not very grabbable, is an enticing mystery. What happened?

The owner of the franchise said, “There’s absolutely nothing I want to add,” and referred me to McDonald’s headquarters.
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That was the first time many people in Chicago had read about the flash mobs. The first time many read they had been happening for quite some time. The article, of course, did not mention the race of the troublemakers. But comments from both white and black readers, as well as subsequent stories, made it clear
these incidents of racial violence were perpetrated by black people.

But mention it in the recent mayoral race? Newspaper accounts? No and no.

Soon after, the mobs got more ambitious: With fifty black people hitting high dollar department and drug stores on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. “They took bottled drinks and sandwiches off the shelves, then ran off.”
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By Memorial Day, increasing numbers of people in Chicago knew they had a problem with racial violence. People in charge felt like they were helpless to do anything about it, and an increasing number of black criminals knew they had an opportunity. Things got so bad that city officials canceled Memorial Day celebrations—at least at one of Chicago’s most popular beaches. They said it had nothing to do with violence and black people systematically assaulting people on that beach during the holiday weekend.

No. Instead officials closed North Avenue Beach because it was hot. Other Chicago beaches stayed open, but North Avenue Beach closed. Did the closing have anything to do with the violence in the neighborhood preceding the holiday? Or reports that thousands of black people were creating a violent atmosphere and fighting on the beach?

Of course not, said the Mayor—who pushed the decision down to his Superintendent of Police, who pushed it down to his watch commander.

“Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago’s top cop, Garry McCarthy, have insisted the action was due to concern about public health and safety because of heat-related illnesses. They said the closure did not have to do with gangs or fights. But the 911 calls include complaints about fights involving dozens of people at Oak Street Beach and North Avenue Beach.” There were no 911 reports of heat exhaustion that day.
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Nothing to do with crime. Certainly nothing to do with race. If it had anything to do with race, would all of those black politicians standing behind the mayor have been nodding their head in agreement?

Few believed it. It was so incredible that even the local CBS affiliate wasn’t buying it:

“You had public safety and you had public health,” Mayor Emanuel said. “There’s no Monday morning quarterbacking.”

“There was no gang activity that was involved in the commander’s decision to close the beach,” said police Supt. Garry McCarthy.

“But a police source close to the situation tells a different story. That officer says police got reports of up to 1,000 suspected gang members meeting here to start trouble. Callers to Cliff Kelley’s show on WVON 1690 AM agree. “It was gang bangers acting stupid up there,” one caller said.

“There was a lot of, like, ethnic minorities, like, yelling at each other,” one woman said.

“The violence that they had between each other, I guess quarrels, and they knew that everyone would meet here,” a man said.
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For you non-Chicagoians, WVON stands for Voice of the Negro.

Violent mobs had been a concern at North Avenue Beach previously. Just one month earlier a group of about one hundred teenagers “surrounded two people on bikes. Both were knocked off their bikes and thrown into Lake Michigan.
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See if you can find a news story about that riot. Go ahead. I dare you.

The listeners to a local talk radio station had no problem describing what was happening: Large groups of black people were terrorizing visitors to the beach.

Listeners to WLS Radio’s Don Wade and Roma Show reported seeing dozens of gang-bangers pushing people off their bikes. One caller said those that were causing the havoc were not dressed for the beach and looked like “bad elements.”
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During an interview with WLS Radio’s Bill Cameron, Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy denied the reports, saying that neither gang activity nor violence played any role in the closing.

“Well, you know, this again is frustrating, because if they called a radio station or if they called a news reporter, nobody ever called 911 to report that,” McCarthy said.

“We’ve reviewed the calls that occurred from 1 o’clock that day at North Beach and there were 19 calls for service. Of those 19 calls, one of them was for a disorderly group of kids, or youth. That hardly represents out of control gang bangers permeating and disturbing the peace on the beach.”
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But that’s hardly what happened that day. WLS Radio secured a collection of 911 tapes from that day in 2011 from the Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC). The tapes contradict what the police superintendent said and confirm what listeners reported. There were numerous reports of violent activity on the beach that day.

During one call, a woman tells an emergency responder that a fight had broken out on North Avenue Beach where she noticed minimal police presence.

“Yes, there’s a fight breaking out on the beach because there’s nothing but animals covering this beach today,” the woman says. “I mean, you can’t even walk along the bike path or ride along the bike path. There’s no crowd control. What the hell is going on?”

A 911 caller who was at the Oak Street Beach food and concessions stand said, “We have a couple of gentlemen who are threatening to shoot us, threatening to whip our a**,
trying to take our own equipment.”

In another call, a woman near Oak Street Beach requested police assistance due to a large crowd of kids fighting.

“We need immediate police officers on the scene, I believe there is a fight,” the caller said. The dispatcher asked her how many people were fighting and the woman said, “it’s a crowd, a huge crowd of kids.

Another woman also reported a large group of kids blocking the bike path on Oak Street Beach.

“There is another fight here, these kids, there’s so many kids they are blocking the bike path, now there’s so many on the path.” When the dispatcher asked how many individuals were involved, the woman responded, “I would say 30 or more.”

Another caller reported approximately 30 individuals from Oak Street Beach attempting to cross Lake Shore Drive near the Drake Hotel.