White Girl Bleed a Lot (18 page)

Even
The New York Times
admitted that officers were underreporting crime to make the stats look good. The headline says it all: “Police Tactic: Keeping Crime Rates Off the Books.”
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One year after the “White Girl” beat down, it happened again. Hundreds of black people were fighting and terrorizing people trying to enjoy the fireworks … at the same place.

Once again, the newspaper did not have a clue what was happening.

How could this happen?

Let’s talk about police reporting. Very few print reporters start out to be police reporters. It is a dead end beat. Most of the job involves carrying a portable police scanner, going to house fires, and showing up at police headquarters to look at crime reports. And because most editors equate crime with black lawlessness—and they don’t want to be accused of racism—most crime stories are small. It has to be a big story to make it in the front of the papers.

There is only one unforgivable crime for a police reporter: Miss a major public safety disaster. The police reporter monitors the police scanner to hear the chatter among the officers to find out what is happening. The first time an editor ever handed me a police scanner, he informed me about the weekend cop reporter who turned off his scanner to play some basketball. The next day, readers and editors of the paper in Colorado Springs wanted to know why the largest train wreck in the history of their city was not mentioned in the paper. That is why anyone who has ever worked any amount of time as a police reporter simply cannot understand how a major daily paper can miss a major civil disturbance as they did in Milwaukee in 2011. Either the reporters at the Milwaukee papers don’t use scanners, or they knew about this civil disturbance and chose not to report it.

And one year later, they missed it again. The
Journal-Sentinel
admitted the first they heard of the July 4th riot was when one of its readers called and told them.

Here’s the late account of a big riot:

One bystander, who was attending the fireworks, called the
Journal Sentinel
Wednesday to say he saw a crowd of possibly 100 youth screaming and running in the area. He said he also saw about 20 Milwaukee police officers in squads, bicycles and on horseback. A police helicopter was also circling above, he said.
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In a written statement, the police said everyone was safe. But if the newspaper went down there and figured out what was really going on, there is no record of that. For the second year in a row, I guess we’ll just have to take their word for it.

Juneteenth 2012. Big party. Parade. Also lots of cops, police on horseback, and helicopter.

What happened at this overwhelming black event?

We don’t really know anything from the papers, except that fifty-four people were arrested. A few days after the event,
Journal-Sentinel
columnist Eugene Kane weighed in. He did not attend the party because he was too busy taking a walk. “But most people I talked to said it was enjoyable despite the steamy weather.”

Look at the bright side, he suggested:

Unlike previous years, there were no flash-point incidents reported. No bottles were thrown at officers, and no fights broke out after the festival ended.

No ugly scenes were caught on camera, only to be replayed on local TV for days.
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Curiously, it is very difficult to find news accounts of these events.

People writing on one of Kane’s social media message boards (whatever that is) had a different opinion than his immediate circle of friends.

Chanin Kelly-Rae, an African-American woman who now lives in Seattle, said the arrests at Juneteenth Day recalled her own experiences.

“I wouldn’t go to that festival for all the tea in China,” wrote Kelly-Rae, who graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and spent several years teaching in Milwaukee Public Schools before leaving in 2001.

“I grew up in Milwaukee and remember all too well this event. I also know my parents made us stay away because someone usually got shot, robbed, there are fights and all sorts of risk,” she said.
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In 2011 the newspaper did not do much with it, but at least one local TV reporter filed a story about how disappointed he was that a “few people” were causing trouble. And most of the people had a “positive” experience there.

I probably would have believed the guy had it not been for the video taken from a helicopter showing a crowd of hundreds of black people, maybe more, stopping a car, beating the driver, then wrecking the car. Then doing it again to a different car and a different driver.

Other video showed thousands of black people milling about, with one hitting a policeman, and others ignoring directives to disburse. The reporter said that was from a “few troublemakers.” The video of the violence was rolling as the reporter was describing the wonderful atmosphere. And oh yeah, he said this was the second year in a row they had trouble at Juneteenth. If you are keeping count, by the summer of 2012 it was three years in a row.

Two people were arrested and four were cited. The local paper had lots of pictures of people cooking ribs, eating corn,
playing basketball, and dancing. But not one shot of the fifty-four people arrested for disorderly conduct. Not one of the two people caught with guns. Maybe next year.

One blogger, calling herself the Milwaukee socialite, was trying to encourage people to attend. Before saying “See you there,” she had to express her reservations and explain why she would be missing most of the event:

“I will not be getting there until 5PM especially since June-teenth seems to be the meeting place for thugs with pit bulls, but methinks I can spend my lunch at the opening ceremony to snap a picture or two!”
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Kane and the
Journal-Sentinel
were also probably too busy to cover the race riot just a few weeks before over Memorial Day—at the same lakefront park where all the trouble takes place on the Fourth of July holiday season. Police closed the beach after violent disturbances involving hundreds of black people. The closure was reported in a very matter of fact tone as if it was a given. Afterward, hundreds of black people leaving the beach descended on a nearby shopping district where they wrecked and looted a Whole Foods grocery store and a McDonald’s. FOX6 News obtained amateur cell phone video showing the chaos:

“There were cars stopping, yelling at the kids, telling them to stop; one man said ‘stop fighting stop fighting’ they kept on fighting,” said eyewitness Allen Miller. “Other kids were trying to pull them apart. They just would not stop.”

“I seen like, eight motorcycle cops, two horse cops, about five cop cars, seven cops across the street. They were right here on the sidewalk right in front of McDonald’s, and they were climbing over the rail bottoms, standing here yelling to go, stop, or keep fighting,” Alan Miller, who witnessed the ordeal, said.

Miller is a regular at the McDonald’s, and has seen this kind of thing before. He says it won’t be the last time either.

“I figured everyone walking down to the lake cause it’s a nice day, I think something’s going to happen that day,” Miller said.

The incident is similar to one last Fourth of July when a mob ransacked a gas station just a few blocks away.
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Police made four arrests—all day. If you look at the crime statistics—this riot never happened. So for everyone keeping track, we covered the Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Juneteenth, and the State Fair.

“Colin, what about St. Patrick’s Day, 2012?” you might be asking.

Nothing happened, if you ask police or check the newspaper. But if you go to YouTube, you see a lot of fighting, police with billy clubs, police on horses, and I don’t know if that police helicopter was around or not.

Maybe the police scanner in the newsroom was broken that day.

Every once in a while people who read my articles will say: “That wasn’t a riot.” Or, “you have no evidence that was a race riot.” I may doubt myself for about one second; then all I have to do is look to the Internet for proof. I watched a YouTube video from November 2011. There were a few dozen black people fighting in a Walmart parking lot. Apparently the fight started inside and then spilled out to the parking lot. One person got run down by a car.

So you tell me what that sounds like.

The
Journal-Sentinel
might be sleeping their way through
many of these disturbances, but every once in a while the self-proclaimed “watchdogs” wake up long enough to report something useful. In 2012 they did confess that Milwaukee police were underreporting violent crime to make the city look safer than it really was.

When Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn touted the city’s fourth-straight year of falling crime in February, hundreds of beatings, stabbings and child abuse cases were missing from the count, a
Journal-Sentinel
investigation has found.

More than 500 incidents since 2009 were misreported to the FBI as minor assaults and not included in the city’s violent crime rate, the investigation found. That tally is based on a review of cases that resulted in charges – only about one-fifth of all reported crimes.
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They do report that the department mishandled cases involving people who were arrested. But there’s not a word about cases of mob violence where police were present and no one was arrested.

OK, watchdogs, you can go back to that shady tree next to the barn now.

“But, Colin,” you ask, “what about River Splash? Or Greek Fest? Or the other festivals with fighting and gunfire where things got a ‘little out of hand?’”

You look ’em up. Big Mike knows. I am through with Milwaukee. Except for one thing: In 2010 Juneteenth became a Wisconsin state holiday.