Editor’s note: Colin Flaherty has done more reporting than any other journalist on what appears to be a nationwide trend of skyrocketing black-on-white crime, violence and abuse. WND features these reports to counterbalance the virtual blackout by the rest of the media due to their concerns that reporting such incidents would be inflammatory or even racist. WND considers it racist not to report racial abuse solely because of the skin color of the perpetrators or victims.
Mike Hagler does not want to hear any more excuses for race riots at the Wisconsin State Fair. Or gunfire at the Juneteenth celebration in downtown Milwaukee.
"Big Mike" has a simple solution for the hundreds of black people who terrorized the Mayfair Mall and the Independence Day fireworks celebrations: Knock it off.
"Every time there is an event going on, people want to pull out guns and go crazy,” said Hagler, the teenage video blogger from Milwaukee. "Everything is getting cancelled: State fairs. Summerfest. All people want to do is fight. Y'all acting like animals. And it is crazy to say it is our own people acting that way."
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He continued, "It's crazy when you go to an event and there be a majority white people there. As soon as black people come around that get to moving out of the way. They already know what is going to happen.
"It's like when you want to go to Juneteenth. I ain't going to go to Juneteenth because people already know what is going to happen. People are going to be shooting and fighting."
It cannot be as bad as Big Mike thinks, right?
The robbery and assault on July 3, 2011, is the benchmark for black mob violence in Milwaukee.
It started out like a flash rob that could have been Philadelphia or Chicago or any of the dozens of other places around the country where black people meet, rush and rob a store: And they did it on video: Fifty to 100 black people loot a BP store after the fireworks.
But this crew took it to a new level: They headed to a nearby park, stolen goodies still in hand, where they taunted and beat 10 white kids. Standing over one of her victims, an assailant called out to her friends, "White girl bleed a lot." They laughed.
Police came. They ran away. The next day, victims were surprised to learn none of the officers had filed a report. That meant the riot never happened.
Victims called talk radio and went to the Internet, demanding action. Soon, the police chief and Mayor Barrett held a press conference. The chief said "crime was colorblind," and he did not appreciate the media trying to sensationalize it. The local paper finally ran a story:
"Shaina Perry remembers the punch to her face, blood streaming from a cut over her eye, her backpack with her asthma inhaler, debit card and cellphone stolen, and then the laughter.
Most newsrooms follow police activities on a scanner. If they do not write about public safety problem, it is because they were not listening to the police radio calls, or they chose not to.
After a few days, public officials tried to play catch up, but by then the people of Milwaukee knew two things: One, their town just had a full scale race riot; and two, the police were not capable of calling it by name, let alone doing anything about it.
The "white girl bleed a lot" beatdown came three weeks after another major racial disturbance called Juneteenth, a black holiday commemorating the end of slavery. A party-goer remembers:
My girlfriend and I walked up to Juneteenth from Riverwest; a half a dozen squad cars rushed past us and one squad car stopped. The officers were wearing full riot gear and said something to the likes of 'What the hell are you (white) people doing in this neighborhood? Get the … out of here, don't you know there is a riot going on a block away?"
They did not. Nor would anyone in Milwaukee ever learn that from most of the local media.
This year it happened again at Juneteenth when another massive disturbance resulted in the arrests of 54 people.
The newspaper never really said what all those people were doing to get arrested. The paper did, however, carry 17 pictures of black people cooking ribs, eating corn, dancing and playing basketball. There were no pictures of any of the 54 people breaking the law, or the two caught with guns.
Nor did the paper allow any comments from readers, where witnesses often write in.
A few days after 2012 Juneteenth celebration, Journal-Sentinel columnist Eugene Kane said 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.
Curiously, it is very difficult to find news accounts of these events.
People writing to Kane 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.
Kane and the Journal-Sentinel were probably too busy to cover another race riot earlier this year as well. This one on Memorial Day at a lakefront beach.
Police closed the beach after violent disturbances involving hundreds of black people. Afterwards, the same group descended on a nearby shopping district, where they wrecked and looted a Whole Foods grocery store and a McDonald's. WTMJ at least tried to report it:
"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 McDonalds, and they were climbing over the rail bottoms, standing here yelling to go, stop, or keep fighting," Alan Miller, who witnessed the ordeal, said.
Sometimes the local news gets video during the crimes. But even then, they have trouble dealing with the images.
In 2010, a local TV reporter talked about how disappointed he was that a "few people" caused trouble at Juneteenth.
As he talked, the station ran B-Roll from a helicopter showing hundreds of black people, maybe more, stopping a car, beating the driver, then wrecking the car. That happened twice. And there were lots of other violent incidents, many on video.
Nevertheless, most of the people had a "positive" experience there, he said.
Not all local media is so tolerant of the racial violence. After the "white girl bleed a lot" beating, talk show host James Harris, of 620 WTMJ in Milwaukee, told a television audience:
This was not a color-blind crime. We have this epidemic of black teenage mob violence happening all over the country.
It is from a perfect storm of entitlements, political correctness, and white guilt where people are afraid to identify who are doing the crimes and why they are doing it.
(The mayor and police chief) were more worried about being accused of racial profiling that the fact that black mobs were roaming down the streets hurting people.
This was a PC response because it was black mob violence. You guys (fellow panelists) are in denial.... We have a real problem. A real sickness in the (black) community, that until we address it, it will continue to explode.
Just a few weeks later it all began again, this time at the bucolic Wisconsin State Fair in Milwaukee.
There, hundreds of black people beat up white people, damaged their cars, hurled racial epithets, and caused chaos inside and outside the gates of the state fair for almost two hours.
This is what a race riot sounds and feels like, from August 5, 2011:
"They were attacking everybody for no reason whatsoever. It was 100% racial," claimed Eric, an Iraq war veteran from St. Francis who says young people beat on his car.
"I had a black couple on my right side, and these black kids were running in between all the cars, and they were pounding on my doors and trying to open up doors on my car, and they didn't do one thing to this black couple that was in this car next to us. They just kept walking right past their car. They were looking in everybody's windshield as they were running by, seeing who was white and who was black. Guarantee it."
Eric, a war veteran, said that the scene he saw Thursday outside State Fair compares to what he saw in combat.
One of the "teens" arrested keeping it real: He attacked white people because he could.
"Police say the teen told investigators whites were chosen because he considered them 'easy targets.'"
Or, as an attacker told one of his victims at a race riot in Philadelphia: "It's not our fault you can't fight."
People heard the "get tough" speech before, after a bout of racial violence in January 2011 at a local mall.
Hundreds of black people met in January 2011 at the Mayfair Mall. The 911 tapes tell the story:
"We need police right away. At Boston Store. They're taking over the store. Hurry. The kids are all over the place. All over. The top level. They're just everywhere. Running, screaming, breaking things," another frantic employee told 911.
After they were done trashing several shops inside, they took the carnage outside:
The police report said dozens of kids forced their way onto a bus without paying and wouldn't get off. While police were clearing the bus, a fight involving forty kids broke out outside McCormick and Schmick's restaurant. The restaurant went into lockdown after diners reported hearing gunshots.
A few days after the mall carnage, Shelley Walcott, a black TV reporter wrote an Open Letter to the Kids Who Tore Up Mayfair.
None of you seem to have any concept of what's being said about you out here in the real world.
Look, as a working journalist I am supposed to stay neutral. But through your actions last week you are making things worse on yourself, and the entire black community.
You just reinforced that old standby stereotype that we are all nothing but uneducated troublemakers.
Mayfair is known as the nicest mall in Milwaukee. But Wal-Mart gets some action too: A disagreement at a local Wal-Mart spilled into the parking lot, where a car hit one of the 25 or so participants. All on YouTube.
And let's not forget the black violence on YouTube from St. Patrick's Day this year. You won't find an account of it in the papers, but if you go to YouTube, you see a lot of fighting, billy clubs and police on horses.
The latest attack is surrounded in Milwaukee mystery. It happened this year, again at the Independence Day fireworks.
Here's an account from the local paper:
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.
In a written statement, the police said everyone was safe.
Previous reports:
Judge to black perps: What are you doing with your lives?
Black mobs terrorize 1 of 'whitest big cities'
Racial violence explodes in more states
Black mobs now beating Jews in New York
Black mob violence hits Nordstrom
Black expo 'inescapably tied' to race violence
Black-on-white link found in Minneapolis violence
Call for crackdown on black-on-white terror
'Boredom' proves to be trigger for 'flash mobs'
Colin Flaherty is the author of "White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Racial Violence to America and How The Media Ignore It," @ColinFlaherty.