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Busting out all over: Black mob violence

See if your home town is on this list of notorious cities

Published: 20 hours ago

Colin Flaherty

Welcome to the new normal: Large-scale black mob violence is busting out in Philadelphia, Chicago, Utica, Jacksonville, St. Louis, Wilmington (Delaware), Greenville (South Carolina), Grand Rapids, Peoria, Springfield (Ohio), Newark, Boston and Brooklyn.

All in the last three weeks.

Police say they are baffled. Others say it is a regular meteorological event: “Large crowds and fights are not uncommon in the city in the warm weather,” said the ABC affiliate in Philadelphia.

The latest example of the new normal took place Tuesday in Philadelphia: 200 black people on the streets of the downtown financial district: fighting, vandalizing, rampaging, refusing to disperse, tossing bottles at police. It began at 4 p.m. and took police 90 minutes to restore order.

At the epicenter of the violence, an employee of Wendy’s said no one was surprised.

“It usually happens when the weather breaks,” Lakia Garrick told the local Fox affiliate. “They come in here and go crazy. It was really expected.”

Fourteen black people were arrested and charged with misdemeanors.

The riot came less than a month after the political and media establishment of Philadelphia rose up in outrage at an article in Philadelphia Magazine called “Being White in Philly.”

The article documented how racial violence was an every day fact of life in the City of Brotherly Love; and how most white people were afraid to talk about it because they were afraid of being called a racist.

Or as the Philadelphia Inquirer put it: The article was seen as “dwelling on negative experiences that whites had with blacks that often fit into racial stereotypes.”

Mayor Nutter asked the city’s Human Relations Commission to investigate the author and the magazine.

Perhaps they could call Brandon Jones as a witness. Temple University hired Jones to get to the bottom of these large scale violent events in Philadelphia two years ago. He explained the widespread black mob violence in the area to Diverse Issues in Higher Education: “He understands the high energy level of youths and the need ‘to blow off some steam.’”

Meanwhile, the television stations in Philadelphia are being extra vigilant to ban from their message boards any Philadelphia Magazine-style comments attributing the violence to race. That is why George says his comments were removed from the ABC news site:

“I am honored that the uneducated censor that monitors this board removed my previous post. Since when is it against ‘Posting Policy’ to request people not jump to conclusions when there is a large fight in the city? Tsk Tsk, honesty certainly is not anything you are acquainted with. You must be a Philly School graduate. Anyway, I grew up in the city & there were MANY HOT days & nights and we NEVER started or were involved in fights with 200 people or 10 people. I imagine in the words of Michael Vick, ‘It is a cultural thing’.”

Glenn noticed the same thing: “They wiped out pretty much the whole first wave of comments. No grace for stating the obvious.”

The rest of the country has been busy as well.

In St. Louis, 65 hours earlier, police responded to reports of a mob of 100 to 200 black people fighting and shooting guns at Leclede’s Landing, near the famous arch. Police refused to release an incident report on the violence, other than to say they thought it was a flash mob.

One man was shot. He was also the only one arrested after police found marijuana in his clothing at the hospital.

Kevin McBryan told KSDK TV news that racial violence in St. Louis is not hard to document: “I witnessed ‘flash mobs’ running thru VP fairs sucker punching white people on 3 different occasions.”

The VP Fair is an annual St. Louis celebration held in the same area commemorating the “Veiled Prophet.”

This practice is version of racial violence often called the Knockout Game and many say it originated in St. Louis. A local judge recently said that one person alone was responsible for more than 300 cases of the Knockout Game.

These racial attacks, and more than 500 others in 90 cities around the country, are documented in book “White Girl Bleed a Lot: The return of racial violence and how the media ignore it.”

A few hours earlier in Utica, N.Y., more than 100 black people were having a “riot.”

Officers described the scene as “very chaotic with numerous fights breaking out,” said the local NBC affiliate.

“Police say they were greatly outnumbered.” Six black people were arrested.

And a few hours before that, police had to fire pepper spray at “groups of people fighting in the East Bluff, just minutes before a double shooting in South Peoria left one person dead.” All of the people were black.

No one was arrested.

And a few hours before that in Jacksonville, Fla., a mob of at least 15 black people attacked a man walking home from the grocery story. Two Good Samaritans who came to his assistance saved him from further harm as the mob scattered at their approach.

First Coast News was the only local media outlet to report the attack. Several residents of Jacksonville wondered about the news blackout:

“Have heard nothing about it here,” said one reader replying to a WND account of the mob violence. “I will ask the TV channels and the newspaper: What gives?”

In Greenville, S.C., a few days before that, a group of 20- 30 black people rampaged through downtown, assaulting, vandalizing and robbing in at least three separate incidents. One on video.

Just a few days before that, in Wilmington, Del., a mob of more than 100 black people were fighting in the streets. One person was shot, police described the action as a “large fight” and no one seemed alarmed or thought it was anything out of the ordinary.

A few days before that, in a suburb of Newark, N.J., police reported the latest in a series of violent robberies targeting Hispanic day laborers. NJ.com reported a man had “been robbed by a group of six African-American males.”

In Chicago, one week before that, 500 black people rampaged through the upscale shopping district known as the Magnificent Mile. They destroyed property, assaulted at least one police officer, sent one other person to the hospital with injuries.

Local media referred to members of the violent mob as “mischievous teens.” And Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell suggested the rioters should lose their Facebook pages as punishment.

Chicago Alderman Emma Mitts told the Chicago Sun-Times that we are way past that:

“They’re taking over the streets. They’re taking over the restaurants,” Mitts told the Sun Times. Mitts said it’s not only happening in downtown but also in other Chicago neighborhoods. “They dance all over the street [and] in the restaurants, and they’re stopping traffic.”

Mitts and other aldermen want to make sure the parents get counseling.

In the Boston area, two weeks before that, a group of 15 to 30 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.

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.

The night before that, in New York, demonstrations protesting a police shooting turned violent. Dozens of black people looted a Brooklyn drug store, on video, during a protest on police violence.

And did I mention the “large fights” in Louisiana, South Carolina, Ohio, and, again, New Jersey? All this month?

More and more local news sites are allowing fewer and fewer comments from readers about the racial violence. Some shut down the comments altogether when the topic is race. Others purge comments frequently.

But where the topic is discussed, the race of the offenders is often discussed. Most people want to know why. In Philadelphia, Ron Bockman suggested a better headline for the CBS story: “Correct headline, Large Disturbance Of Black Teens Gathers In Center City Philadelphia.”

Others say anyone who notices is a racist.

Post Script: And Wednesday of this week, two hours after this story was written, in Springfield, Ohio, 50 black people fought police with aluminum baseball bats at 4 p.m. Three people were arrested and charged with rioting.

See the Big List of black mob violence.