White Girl Bleed a Lot (20 page)

It took more than an hour to quell the disturbance, which began about 4:20 p.m. as a single fight involving a large group in a food court and quickly spread through the nation’s largest mall, said mall spokeswoman Bridget Jewell. Bloomington police and mall security arrested at least 10 juveniles and young adults on suspicion of disorderly conduct, police said Monday.
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Ten people were arrested. All were black.

Guess it’s time to break out my “it’s a long cold winter” theory to explain the violence.

The year 2012 started out with a bang in Minneapolis. Not satisfied with being known as the “most dangerous city in the Midwest,” they took it up a notch. In the first part of 2012 alone there were between ten and twenty incidents. And, of course, Minneapolis police made sure to point out that race had nothing to do with the epidemic of violent crime in their downtown.

Crime reporter Matt McKinney called the flash mob violence and mayhem “random” and saw “no other real pattern emerges.” In his mind the “motivation for the attack remains unclear.”
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Police and reporters may have a hard time figuring it out. But more and more people in Minneapolis are realizing their city is caught up in a wave of racial violence, featuring groups of black people—big and small, men and women, young and not so young—marauding through the downtown, beating, hurting, destroying, and stealing. Sometimes they do it right in front of the police.

There are a lot of witnesses to these events. There are at least fifteen videos posted on YouTube from 2011 alone.

In Minneapolis, the
Star Tribune
headline “Flash mob
actions worry Minnesota police” tells part of the story. McKinney fills in some of the details about one of the incidents from March 2012:

We were just biking, the three of us, having some laughs and enjoying the night,” said the cyclist, who didn’t want his name used out of fear for his safety. It was 7:45 p.m. and the street was crowded with people enjoying the unusually warm evening, he said.

“Suddenly ‘some kid’ ran up to the man’s friend and punched him in the face, breaking his jaw. Another eight to 10 youths surrounded the cyclists, yelling and trying to provoke a fight.

Two police officers had been watching seven youths at a bus stop when they saw them “suddenly surged” toward the cyclists.

As the officers gave chase, the group fled with one victim’s bike. They ran through the seating area at Oceanaire’s patio, picking objects off the tables to throw at one of the bicyclists running after them.
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Eventually four people were arrested, all black.

The bikers got hurt pretty badly, but they got off easy compared to the St. Patrick’s Day mauling twenty black people inflicted on a Minneapolis graphic artist named Pieter. He suffered serious brain injuries and now has no short-term memory. A local bank has turned videos of the crime over to the police. He is afraid to use his last name.

An hour before Pieter was beat and kicked into intensive care, twenty black people assaulted an out-of-town couple at the exact same intersection. The
Star Tribune
may be squeamish about reporting the race of the criminals, but
City Pages
is not:

Melissa screamed as three separate youths came at Kirk, throwing punches. Kirk says he was able to dodge the blows.
He remembers one of the assailants smiling while he threw punches, “like it was fun.” As people on the street started to take notice of the attack, the mob dispersed, leaving Kirk one-on-one with a man he says was over 6 feet tall.

“I dodged several of his punches before he ran off,” Kirk said, adding that he himself didn’t punch anyone. “I believe that if it wasn’t for my wife’s screaming I would have been seriously injured.” Thankfully, he ended up with nothing more than a swollen neck. Melissa, a 33-year-old school teacher, was pushed, and one of the assailants burned her hand with a cigarette, she says.

After the mob dispersed, Kirk and Melissa made their way back to the Marquette. There, they talked to a police officer about the incident.

Wrote Melissa in an email: The “cop wasn’t that interested in taking a report, since we didn’t have descriptions—just African-American. … [I] wonder how many people have been attacked, since our story isn’t even part of the stats.”
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There’s more:

May 2012—“Mob robbers hit convenience stores in St. Paul”
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June 2012—“4 shot after argument leads to gunfire in Mpls.”
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April 2012—“Victim describes ‘flash mob’ attack in downtown Mpls.” The eighth one from February to May, 2012.
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After dozens and dozens of attacks, shootings, beatings, thefts, acts of vandalism, and mayhem—many not reported by police or the media—the business owners want the “chaos in downtown Minneapolis to end.” They think part of the problem is that at 2:30 a.m. all the clubs must be empty. “It’s like the beginning of a race: Lift up the doors and all of the horses run,” Celeste Shahidi, the owner of two buildings on First Avenue, described
the scene. She thinks bar closing hours should be staggered to prevent the rush.”
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Police say club owners are at fault.

Whatever.

City officials do not want any part of this “return of racial violence” business.

“We don’t keep track of arrestees by race,” says police spokesman William Palmer. “And frankly, no, it doesn’t matter. We arrest and prepare criminal cases for consideration of prosecution for those people who choose to break the law. Race has nothing to do with it.”

That’s interesting because the city does seem to care about race when it comes to its hiring practices. They keep track of the race of officers in its affirmative action_reporting and recruiting. According to the city Web site, “The City of Minneapolis is aware of its commitment as an equal opportunity employer and the efforts necessary to meet the responsibilities outlined in the Affirmative Action Plan. The City’s Department of Human Resources serves as a liaison through its ‘Connecting with the Communities We Serve’ program and maintains contact with the following community-sponsored action groups,” including the Black Story Tellers Alliance, African Community Services, Minneapolis Urban League, Minnesota Multicultural Development Center, and other race-based groups.
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The city also has a policy to “intensively recruit protected class persons,” including black people. And if they are having trouble qualifying for a job, the city will provide tutoring and change certification procedures to help select more “protected class persons.”
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So race apparently matters to someone in the city of Minnesota. At least some times. And of course, this affirmative action is standard procedure at every police department in the country.

Blogger Neal Krasnoff says the violence is more widespread than the police or media are talking about:

One of my friends was robbed at Nicollet and 7th. They harassed her, then one mutt knocked her down, pounded her head against the sidewalk, then took off with her cell phone. The perps are — yes, you and I guessed correctly — Male/Black/18-35. She’s the 5th person in her circle of friends to be attacked.

The
Star Tribune
is loathe to discuss race, but many of the black people involved in the mayhem are not. They freely post their exploits on YouTube or brag about their crimes.

Videos of groups of violent black people in Minneapolis are numerous, and some are even set to music.

McKinney and the police are not willing to talk about violence and how race is a part of it. But the readers of the paper, bloggers, and talk radio are.

“Let’s stop being so p.c. about all this,” said one reader of the
Star Tribune
. “it’s a racial thing, isn’t it? Isn’t it black youth who are the ones committing the vast majority of these downtown crimes, and aren’t they the ones harassing people downtown? Will this comment be censored? Isn’t what I’m saying factual, though, censored or not?
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There is no doubt the crimes are happening. And neither is there any doubt that a large number of people in and out of the media are ignoring racial violence in Minneapolis. The next chapter shows how at least one reporter in Minneapolis got religion.

The education of a liberal or Minneapolis is a hot, racial mess.

W
hen Mike Williams, the afternoon-drive host at the CBS radio affiliate in Minneapolis, read my WND.com story about an epidemic of racial violence in Minneapolis, he was curious—but unconvinced. At first.