White Girl Bleed a Lot (12 page)

Maybe the local news media was concerned about the NAACP. Maybe they didn’t like being called racist. News One reported that “the NAACP will be looking at the way businesses and police treat African American motorcycle riders for Black Biker Week to monitor racial discrimination.” Maybe they will monitor the news media too. Isn’t it strange that three hundred thousand black bike enthusiasts can come to a small town and no local media mentions the group or its members even once?
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Good or bad, isn’t that a story?

Once the biking and the beaching are over, you can pick up the partying in Indianapolis. Just don’t forget your guns.

The annual Indiana Black Expo (IBE) is one of the largest black events in the country. During the several-day event in the summer of 2010, crowds of more than one thousand black IBE-goers emptied into the streets of downtown Indianapolis, where just before 9:30, chaos erupted. It was right after the IBE Summer Celebration.

“Police say eight people were wounded in a burst of gunfire in downtown Indianapolis during the Indiana Black Expo and two more in separate shootings that followed.” There were dozens of fights. Vandalism. One big rolling riot.
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The number of people shot
eventually climbed to ten.

De rigueur, a black reporter interviews the white cop who said that young people are out of control, said that it’s “a few people making it bad for everyone.”

Thank God for videotape, which belies just about everything the cop said. Instead of a few people making it bad for everyone, the footage shows fights, anarchy, and rioting through the streets of Indianapolis. But no one is allowed to say it.

The organizer of the event, Amos Brown III, was thankful that in 2011, the IBE was “violence free! The media hype of last year’s tragedy obscured the fact that the thirty-nine previous Expo’s were relatively violence free, too.”
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Relatively? Compared to what? The violence in 2006, the shootings in 2007, the arrests in 2008 and 2009 …?

A few weeks before the big shoot down in 2010, as many as four hundred thousand racing fans gathered at the nearby Indianapolis Speedway in relative tranquility. “On race day state police issued thirty-five tickets: twenty-seven for underage drinking, two for fake identification, and one each for littering, intoxication, false informing, and possession of marijuana.” That’s it.

In the run up to the 2011 Expo, city officials announced a massive increase in police presence for the event. Even so, two weeks before it opened, several people were shot and police
broke up several “disturbances” with pepper gas in downtown Indianapolis—all involving groups of black people near the Canal, witnesses say. Even the
Indianapolis Star
could not ignore it.

“The violence comes at a sensitive time for city officials,” said the
Star
, because the city officials worried about the image of its downtown and its propensity for violence.

“Although none of the shootings or fights was directly connected to Summer Celebration events or venues, the annual celebration of black culture that attracts more than 200,000 people Downtown during its 11-day run has been inescapably tied to the violence.”
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Despite the record of violence and lawlessness at their events, officials of the Black Expo sponsored a public forum in Indianapolis to protest the shooting of Trayvon Martin.

During the course of the forum, an audience member boldly asked if African-Americans should launch an armed struggle,” wrote panelist Brandon Perry in the
Indianapolis Recorder
. “I hope I’m wrong about this, but the ‘gasps’ came from a few who seemed to advocate armed conflict against racists or the government.
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Calls for a violent black revolution on the streets of Indianapolis? Who knew?

And the violence in Indianapolis continues:

On St. Patrick’s Day of 2012, five black people were shot in downtown Indianapolis following an altercation. In May 2012 a young white couple out for an evening stroll near the
downtown canal was assaulted by a mob of seven black men.

Also in May 2012, a resident of Indianapolis posted a video of black people fighting that ended with three people shot and one dead. “It’s like the LA riots out there,” said a video poster known as Justin Beagle.

City officials, local media, and Expo organizers may downplay the lawlessness of downtown Indianapolis, but YouTube is full of rap videos featuring Indianapolis black people reveling in murder, violence, theft, and drug dealing. Even bragging about it.

In 2012, Indianapolis hired a black police chief in the hopes that he might, at least in part, better understand the black mob violence and stop it. It was a response to a special trip Al Sharpton made to Indianapolis where he blasted the mayor for police brutality and the injuries fifteen-year-old Brandon Johnson suffered:

“You would assume that police in Indianapolis aren’t trained on how to restrain people,” Sharpton said, “Four or five of them and they can’t restrain a 15-year-old?” He went on to call the incident an injustice.
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No such luck.

In January 2013 it started again. The Circle Centre Mall—a gleaming display of downtown redevelopment when it opened in 1996—is a multi-story retail center connected by covered walkways to nine hotels and a convention center and was once anchored by Nordstrom.

Today, Nordstrom is gone, as are many of the restaurants and shops. The rest of the mall and the surrounding area is increasingly hazardous—and empty—following a series of black mob riots featuring hundreds of people:

“Two large groups of youth came storming out of the mall, and we overheard them talking about going to get something to
eat. Then the next thing we know, one group followed the other group, got about a block and a half down the street and gunshots went off,” said the Rev. Horatio Luster.
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Earlier in the month in the same mall, members of a black mob attacked police officers trying to break up several large fights. Four were arrested and one subdued with a Taser.
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Soon after, downtown Indianapolis looked like an armed camp with hundreds of police offers on duty and even a helicopter flying above. The new police chief talked tough, calling the riots “urban terrorism.”
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But that dissuaded no one.

In March 2013 the black mob skirted this Maginot line and took their chaos to the suburbs. This time they attacked the Castleton Square Mall, the largest and some say nicest shopping district in the state. Local media accounts were eager to downplay the violence and ignore the racial component of the mob.
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The
Indianapolis Star
said there were two dozen people involved in a fight. The NBC affiliate called it a “teen scuffle.” The local Fox station reported a “fight [broke] out.” But people who were there say the crowds were bigger, more widespread and more dangerous than what the media portrayed. And everyone involved in the fighting, property destruction, and mayhem was black.

The violence and lawlessness began early one Saturday evening when police were called to quell a disturbance involving twenty to fifty black people at a McDonald’s in the mall parking lot. Two guns were brandished during a violent confrontation.
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However, unlike earlier examples of black mob violence in downtown Indianapolis malls this year, there were no gunshots, say police.

Soon after, police were called to the nearby Sears where a large crowd of black people was rampaging through the store
knocking over displays and destroying property. By the time police arrived, more than one hundred black people were in the mall food court, fighting. Some were escorted out of the mall and ushered to a waiting bus to return home. Five black people were arrested on various charges related to violence, guns, and resisting arrest.

Not every media voice in Indianapolis is silent, waiting for the violence to go away. There is at least one writer in Indianapolis that is unafraid. Writing in the
Indiana Barrister
, attorney Abdul Hakim-Shabazz, is out of patience with people who have too much patience for black pathology:

It’s time for some tough love in this town. There is a criminal element in this town that consists primarily of young black men. The recent attacks on the Monon; the perpetrators were young black men. The “Pop It Off Boys” gang; young black men. The most high ridden crime areas of the city, who are the bad guys? Say it with me, they are usually young black men.

This may be painful, but the truth hurts. … There is also something even more wrong when people will read this column and get mad at me and call me a “sellout” or an “Uncle Tom” because I was the guy who was brave enough to tell truth.

Indianapolis, you have a problem. Your problem is young black men who are out of control. It’s time to step up and start making examples out of people. Decent citizens black and white should not have to live in fear of urban terrorists. The elderly man who marched for civil rights in the 1950s and 60s should not have to live in fear because some Robin Hoodlum doesn’t know how to honor the social contract. Young people who are trying to do the right thing, shouldn’t have to live in fear because a bunch of cast extras from a Spike Lee film don’t know how to behave.

And I shouldn’t have to write blog posts like this because young black men act like social predators and terrorize the very neighborhoods they live in.
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Compare this with the bumbling explanations on the video from the police administration the day after the IBE shootings. “It’s just a few people who make it bad for everyone,” said Indiana State Trooper Rod Russell. “Unfortunately these situations prevent good people from having good fun.”
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