A city councilman in Kansas City has made a startling discovery: Of all the recent citations handed out in the downtown Plaza area for loitering, all involved are black.
There’s no embedding of the video, but here is a link to a recent news story:
It is not clear whether he is unhappy with the police for giving the tickets. Or with black people for getting them.
The Plaza is featured in White Girl Bleed a Lot, and since I am going to be on Kansas City Radio in a few hours, I thought I would post a few paragraphs from the book here.
Here’s the interview: White Girl Bleed a Lot in Kansas City and KCMO — talking about the Plaza.
WHITE GIRL BLEED A LOT: EXCERPT
After three years of dozens of cases of black mob violence and lawlessness at the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, a local councilman made a startling discovery.
Everyone getting arrested or ticketed is black.
Councilman Reed’s Eureka moment comes more than one year after White Girl Bleed a Lot: The return of racial violence and the media ignore it documented more than 500 cases of this racial violence in Kansas City and around the country.
It is not clear whether the Councilman is unhappy with the police for writing the citations or with local black people for getting them.
But he said it. And three years after the public first began to take notice of the frequent and large scale episodes of racial violence, the local media could no longer avoid reporting it:
“The fact that a lot of the teens that congregate here on the Plaza, just to hang out, are black teenagers has largely been an implied or an unmentioned fact,” said KMBC TV reporter Michael Mahoney. “Today that all changed in a discussion about summertime curfew.”
Councilman Jermaine Reed wants to have an “honest conversation” about what that means. That brought Mayor Sly James out of his office and onto the Council floor: “I’m not willing to leave that impression with having additional facts,” he said.
No one is really sure when large groups of black people started showing up at the upscale Country Club Plaza in downtown Kanas City, Missouri, but by 2010, the crowds were so big and so violent they were getting increasingly difficult for newspapers and public officials to ignore the violence. Even if no one connected the dots about how everyone involved was black.
The Business Journal was among the first to bell the cat, maybe because one of its reporters saw the violence first-hand. Steve Vockrodt described one night as an “ugly scene” of one thousand “youngsters” that was “nothing less than a riot.”
There were assaults, robberies, vandalism, and broken jaws. Nearby businesses closed early, and there was a lot of general mayhem. Shoppers were afraid. When police tried to step in, they were greeted with profanities and disrespect by the juveniles “every time there was an interaction.” Vockrodt said he was surrounded by fifteen people who tried to steal his bike. It was not the first time these crowds had caused trouble there.
Back in 2010, then-mayor Mark Funkhouser said the mobs were nothing new, and it happened every spring. Sounds like a recurring meteorological event, much like Haley’s comet.
Funkhouser announced he was darn well going to stop it. But by August 2011, Kansas City had a new mayor with the same old problems of black mobs at the plaza. Mayor Sly James was having dinner fifty yards away when three black people were shot during another episode of mob violence. He vowed it would be different by the next weekend. The local NBC affiliate said the problem was isolated and expressed confidence the mayor would soon have it under control.
Two years later they are still waiting. And no one is pretending the problem is isolated any more.
By 2013, local television stations showed groups of black people at the plaza fighting, running from police, and creating mayhem. “The scenes of teens running and ending up in handcuffs are all too familiar now at the crown jewel of Kanas City, the Plaza” said the Fox affiliate in Kansas City. “Just last week another similar incident.”
Another media outlet said it was a “perennial problem.”
Many of the attacks happened in February, prior to the summertime curfew, said the Fox News affiliate in Kansas City.
A homeless man told police he was beat by a group of fifteen kids thought to be younger than sixteen years old. The men and women on the streets say it is a common occurrence. “It’s just unfortunate. I mean I’ve heard stories about people sleeping under the bridges and people come by and hit ’em with bricks and stuff like that,” said Mike Higgins, a Kansas City homeless man. Another man who calls the streets home, Arthur Scott, told us he was attacked last year after three young teens who asked to use his phone.
By 2013, two years after Mayor Sly James said he would have it taken care of by the weekend, it is clear the problem never really went away. “Fights everywhere,” is how one black woman described it. She was also upset that police chased her and her 999 of her closest friends after they told them to leave the plaza, and they refused. More police and tighter curfews have not curbed the violence, said the TV stations.
Now police are sending out “community liaisons” to meet with the black people on the plaza and find out what they need. “The answer is complicated,” said the reporter. That is a euphemism for “What that person just said does not make any sense.”
One of the people said Kansas City should open up a place where teens can party. Others said the curfew and more police were not effective because “teens say they hate being targeted and teens never like being told what to do,” the TV station said.
At one public meeting the mayor said it was time for a dialogue, but most of the newspapers and electronic media don’t permit comments on the topic of racial violence. However, one local blog does not shy away from talking about the racial component of the violence—and the people in charge of stopping it:
A great many eastside voters might not like (Mayor) Sly James telling their kids to stay away from the country club plaza … So Mayor Elect Sly James is not forced to make a choice between Eastside support that was integral to put him in office or the rest of the city that remains terrified of black teens on the plaza.
And while the council gathers more facts, people who live and work near the Plaza are ready to furnish them. In a comment to the KMBC new story, Donovan Tozier said:
“Well I work by the plaza and I can tell you I have never seen a group of white kids running around causing problems, I have not seen a group of Hispanic kids running around causing problems. That goes for Chinese, Korean, or every other race out there. You want to make it a race thing so I am going to call it like I see it. This issue revolves completely around our young black youth. Getting in large groups and running the sidewalks jumping around acting immature is not what the plaza needs or wants as real shoppers are trying to enjoy a night out. I don’t blame anyone for avoiding the Plaza when this happens, it is not a safe environment when hundreds of out of control children are running around.”
Another Plaza visitor commented:
I had to cross the Plaza last summer going home from babysitting, and while sitting at a stoplight I was shouted at, called names, and had my car beaten on by these hooligans. They were ALL black. These are the type of situations that worsen the already tense race relations in this city. The problems on the Plaza are with BLACK teenagers. Call it what you will – since there are no white teens causing the problems. This is a problem for anyone who enjoys the Plaza – so we all get to suffer because of the lack of parenting of these black delinquents.
Critical Race Theory and the Permanence of Racism.
These are just some of the hundreds of examples of racial violence and lawlessness in more than 80 cities around the country as documented in my book: White Girl Bleed a Lot: The return of racial violence to America.
Thomas Sowell said : ”Reading Colin Flaherty’s book made painfully clear to me that the magnitude of this problem is greater than I had discovered from my own research. He documents both the race riots and the media and political evasions in dozens of cities.” – National Review.
Get it here:
