The journalist who, until recently, has been the only newsman to focus on the rapidly growing phenomenon of racial violence in America – including the "Knockout Game" where an attacker bashes, as hard as possible, an innocent passer-by on the head, sometimes resulting in death – today shared with talk radio host Sean Hannity the "relentless mountain of evidence" of the troubling phenomenon.
WND has been exclusively featuring the work of reporter-author Colin Flaherty for several years, and many of his reports have been assembled in "'White Girl Bleed A Lot': The Return of Racial Violence to American and How the Media Ignore It."
Advertisement - story continues below
In it, Flaherty describes how black mobs routinely terrorize cities across the country, but the media and government largely have been silent.
Flaherty congratulated Hannity for being willing to talk about it, and Hannity in turn pressed Flaherty over and over for confirmation that what it sounds like – black mobs identifying whites or Asians as victims, and "cold-cocking" them without warning – was exactly what was going on.
TRENDING: Banned video of Muslims smashing the cross is back
"In the book, there's just one thing after another," Flaherty told Hannity. "There's something very wrong going on that not enough people are talking about."
Hannity noted that Flaherty's book now has "gone viral."
Advertisement - story continues below
Black-on-white violence, Flaherty said, is "exponentially out of proportion" to crime in general.
Meanwhile, since Fox News and other media outlets this week have picked up reporting on what WND has published on page one for years, police departments across America are launching investigations into reports of Knockout Game assaults.
The issue also caught the attention of former U.S. Rep. Allan West.
West has blasted prominent leaders in the black community for failing to address the violence, saying, "There's no profit in it for them."
Advertisement - story continues below
Even across the pond, the Daily Mail Online trumpeted the headline "Teen game of randomly punching strangers becoming a nation-wide problem – and a CONGRESSWOMAN may be the latest victim."
The attack described by the Mail on New York State Rep, Grace Meng, a Democrat, actually doesn't fit the profile of the random Knockout Game attacks, because her Gucci purse was stolen. Typically, a Knockout Game attack starts with one or more members of a black mob clubbing an innocent bystander without notice.
The game is over when the person falls to the ground unconscious, the attacker's arm gets tired of hitting, or the victim is dead.
Seldom is a robbery motive evident.
Advertisement - story continues below
It was AP that carried a report that investigations have been launched in New York, Washington and Jersey City, where those circumstances have played out. In New York, the report said it was a 78-year-old woman just strolling through her neighborhood when she was punched in the head by a stranger.
AP also reported police are investigating a Washington attack on a 32-year-old woman "swarmed by teenagers on bikes." She was "clocked … in the face." In Jersey City, it was a 46-year-old man who died after "someone sucker-punched him and he struck his head on an iron fence."
"In each case, police are investigating whether the attacks are part of a violent game called 'knockout,' where the object is to target unsuspecting pedestrians with the intention of knocking them out cold withone punch."
In the report, Jeffery Butts, a psychologist specializing in juvenile delinquency at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said, "It's hard to excuse this behavior, there's no purpose to this. When someone runs into a store and demands money, you can sort of understand why they're doing it, desperation, whatever. But just hitting someone for the sheer thrill of seeing if you can knock someone out is just childish."
West made no bones about his impatience for those prominent black leaders like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson who have yet to condemn the violence.
Along with the AP reports of police investigations, the Washington Post took an interest, blaming the problem partly on the Internet.
"The Internet is giving attackers bragging rights far beyond their circle of friends or even their neighborhoods. One particularly brutal video from New Jersey showing a young man hitting a woman from behind, sending her face first to the pavement, has a half-million views on YouTube. In recent years, such attacks have turned deadly in St. Louis and upstate New York."
"Regardless if you call it the 'Knockout Game' or not, it's a senseless Act," Phoebe Connelly, 32, told the newspaper. She was attacked over last weekend as she rode her bike in Washington. She said she visits the city often for her work operating a youth leadership program.
A charter school student told the newspaper the idea comes in part from video games like "Grand Theft Auto."
"You can just run up to people, and you can just like hit them and they'll just like fall," the 15-year-old said. "It looks kind of funny in the game."
Despite the hundreds of attacks that Flaherty has documented – his book carries "QR codes" that enable readers to view the online videos being discussed in the book – there remain some doubters.
Just this week, Philly.com said in a report, "But it's unclear if the trend even exists."
For documentation, go to Flaherty.
In fact, he has a chapter called "The Philadelphia Syndrome" and recounts "dozens of episodes of racial mob violence" in the city.
"As I write this, the local news just finished a story on three black people who had been convicted of racial violence. The reporter said Philly had seen five cases of mob violence in the last year," says Flaherty.
"I'm not sure how he's defining 'mob violence' because by my count there are many more than five episodes in Philadelphia. Many share the same characteristics: punching, stealing cell phones, laughing at the victims, sending text messages on stolen phones, fighting, and assaulting police officers."
Just a partial list – from just that city:
- March 17, 2010. Dozens of black people fight in a clothing store while onlookers laugh and cheer.
- Spring 2010. Police break up a black flash mob in the Tioga-Nicetown section of Philadelphia. Kids were bored and acting stupid, said the reporter. The video tells another story.
- July 4, 2010. Hundreds of black people storm the streets of South Philadelphia beating, looting and destroying.
- June 2011. More than 40 black people in a Philly suburb descended on a Sears and ransacked it in broad daylight. Afterwards, the police chief said he feared for the safety – of the rioters.
- July 2011. Hundreds of black people created an “astonishing” amount of violence at downtown Philadelphia restaurants, hotels and bars.
- July 4, 2011. Ten black people assault and stab a student from LaSalle University and his dog. The student is still alive, though many people do not know how. The dog probably saved him.
"This list goes on and on," said Flaherty, "and none of the reporters seemed to notice the race of the criminals. It was so glaring that hundreds of readers commented online and wanted to know why the newspapers repeatedly refused to identify the race of the attackers. Many of the comments were removed for being racist."
But other media, especially in the last week or two, have fewer doubts.
"It's savagery. It's very difficult to watch those tapes," former CBS News correspondent Bernard Goldberg told Bill O'Reilly on "The O'Reilly Factor."
"The reason most of the people watching us tonight are probably shocked by these videos and don't know anything about them ... is because they're getting precious little attention – no attention that we could find in the New York Times and the Washington Post or the network evening newscasts. And I think there's a reason for this, and it's not a journalistic reason."
"Just let's imagine that what we're seeing here is white kids attacking black people," Goldberg continued, "that in cities like St. Louis and Washington and Milwaukee and Hoboken, N.J., and Syracuse, N.Y., and other cities, young white kids got together and said, 'Let's start this game. We'll call it the Knockout.' And they go around and some black guy is coming home from work and out of the blue, they just hit him in the face as hard as they can and he goes down. And then their idiotic white friends giggle about it like a bunch of hyenas, and then they post it on the Internet. That would obviously be a national news story because it's orchestrated racial violence. But this isn't."
Meanwhile on an earlier "Hannity" show, former NYPD detective Bo Dietl blasted media suppression of the trend and criticized the way police agencies have handled the cases.
"The liberal news media doesn't want to say what it is. It's gangs of black youths attacking whites," Dietl told host Sean Hannity.
"It's a race-based thing. It's the black youths against the white individual. Not even just a man. It's against defenseless women and defenseless people and they hit 'em in the face and they try to knock 'em out. People have been killed. My problem is, they gotta take this crime, and they gotta categorize it the way it's supposed to be categorized. It's black-on-white crime. That's racist."
Also appearing on the program was noted criminal defense attorney Remy Spencer, who agreed the "Knockout Game" was severely underreported.
"I think people in today's society are too politically correct and afraid to talk about violence from black people on white people," Spencer said. "But if you reverse it, look at the George Zimmerman trial. That got national attention, not just because a young man died, but because of the race issue. I think media outlets are afraid of reporting this kind of crime."
Greta Van Susteren, host of "On the Record" on the Fox News Channel, lashed into perpetrators of the "Knockout Game."
""This is no game. It is a mean, dangerous and deadly crime," she said.
In a personal commentary, Van Susteren said Americans have to address the problem as soon as possible:
"No one wants to get near the topic of race, but we also can't run from this one. People are getting hurt, they're getting murdered. And even those who live in these communities where this is happening, they have a right to be safe, and they don't have to live in fear of having their children hurt or even poisoned by ugly peer pressure, right?
Note: Media wishing to interview Colin Flaherty, author of "White Girl Bleed A Lot," please contact WND here.
See a trailer for "White Girl Bleed a Lot":
