\nBlack mobs’ Knockout Game raising alarmsDeath, brain injury reported after cases of attackers coldcocking passersby <\/p>\n
\tEditor\u2019s 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.
\n\tReady to play the Knockout Game?<\/p>\n
\tThe St. Louis version is the most popular, so let\u2019s start there: Begin with a bunch of black people. Anywhere from five to 50.
\n\tFind a white person, but an Asian will do. Alone is important. Older is better. Weak and defenseless even more so.
\n\tWithout warning, punch that person in the face as hard as you can. You win if you score a Knockout.
\n\tIf not, keep punching until your arms and legs get too tired to continue. Or the person dies.
\n\tYou can play anywhere, but \u201cvibrant and culturally mixed\u201d South Grand District is probably best. That is where the victims are: Asians, \u201cgay\u201d people, artists, yuppies \u2013 people who won\u2019t fight back.
\n\tThe league does not have official standings. Not yet. But over the last two years, the number of attacks has ranged from 20, if you believe the police, to 100, if you believe people actually playing and watching the game.
\n\tAnd that is just in St. Louis.
\n\tIt is so popular even the St. Louis mayor, Francis Slay, played. Slay and his bodyguard had just left a Pink Floyd tribute show and were riding by a city library in October 2011 when they saw a man in the gutter, unconscious.
\n\tThat man was 51-year-old Matt Quain, who had been on his way home from a local grocery story, ready to celebrate a Cardinals\u2019 victory in the World Series. The Post-Dispatch reports some of the details:
\n\t\u201cEighteen teenagers jumped on him and started hitting him with bricks for no apparent reason,\u201d said Charlie Quain, the victim\u2019s nephew. Quain\u2019s uncle was walking home with a neighbor when he was attacked in front of a public library. Nothing was taken from him, and he was able to escape before things escalated.
\n\tThe game has caused deaths in the past.
\n\t\u201cYou can just see the lines and the bruising where the edge of the bricks were hitting him,\u201d Quain said. \u201cHis jaw is wired shut. It has to be for at least six weeks.\u201d
\n\tQuain was left in a neck brace, with a broken jaw, black eye and stitches in his face.
\n\tThe mayor saw the attackers \u201csaunter\u201d away.
\n\tSoon, seven black people were in custody.
\n\tA few days after the assault, Quain\u2019s family pleaded for an end to the \u201csickening attacks.\u201d
\n\tPolice held a meeting at the school where most of the suspects attended. Please stop the Knockout Game, they begged.
\n\tTwo weeks later, a 54-year old man was another victim. Two of the people arrested were at the meeting.
\n\tThe Quain trial was supposed to begin in January. Instead, the district attorney dropped charges, because a 13-year-old witness did not show up for the trial.
\n\tSlay said it was a case of witness tampering.
\n\t\u201cMy strong guess is that she was intimidated, threatened not to testify which is why she did not show up,\u201d Slay said to the Post Dispatch. \u201cThe case fell apart and the second-degree assault charges were dropped, followed by cheers and high-fives among the defendants.\u201d
\n\tThere was also plenty of jubilation on Facebook, the Post-Dispatch reported, including a dispatch from a black person known as the Knockout King because he was universally acclaimed to be the master of this athletic art form: \u201cFREE ALL MY TKO GUYS.\u201d
\n\tTKO is a boxing term for Technical Knock Out and is also a popular graffiti tag in that neighborhood.
\n\tDespite repeated pleas for peace from police, newspapers and the Quain family, a few days after the charges were dropped, the alleged assailants were back. And they were after Quain. Again.
\n\tKMOV TV talked to the shaken Quain: \u201cI looked up and I was flinching because he had his fists up in the air,\u201d Quain said.
\n\tQuain then pulled out a can of pepper spray and the accused attackers fled the scene.
\n\tDespite the otherwise excellent coverage, at no time did the Post-Dispatch ever include a description of the attackers that included their race. The paper even disabled the comments section of news stories associated with this and other Knockout attacks because readers were demanding to know why.
\n\t\u201cRegarding the local newspaper shutting down the comments section on stories related to The Knockout Game, you should note it is actually now much worse than that,\u201d said Deb, a St. Louis resident. \u201cBecause citizens were so angry at purposeful non-reporting and under-reporting of many stories here in St. Louis, they would take to the Comments Section of high profile crime stories in the online edition of our local paper to discuss and share what they know that the local paper was not reporting.
\n\t\u201cThe Post-Dispatch got tired of being made to look bad and incompetent when the Comments Section had more useful and factual information than the original newspaper article did.\u201d
\n\tNot discussing the race of the assailants is one of the most cherished rules of the Knockout Game.
\n\tOr to paraphrase the popular movie: First rule of the Knockout Game: Don\u2019t talk about the race of those involved in the Knockout Game.
\n\tThe Quain case was the most visible but not the most deadly. That happened in April 2011, when two elderly Vietnamese immigrants were attacked and one was killed.
\n\t\u201cIt is because of a game called Knockout. Someone punched him in the head for sport and entertainment. The goal is to knockout someone with one punch. If you do that, you win,\u201d reported KMOV.
\n\tExex Murphy won this game. He was charged with murder. On his Facebook page, he reported:
\n\t\u201cI just got arrested and detained. Good thing they didn\u2019t read my rights.\u201d
\n\tMore cryptically, three days after the killing:
\n\t\u201cPeople love tu play wit people freedom. But not dsz one so com n play because I will win n yo freedom will b done to.\u201d
\n\tHis Facebook page is still open and available to the public. In one picture, his girlfriend is wearing a shirt that says \u201cObama is my homeboy.\u201d
\n\tAsian immigrants were victims of at least four other similar attacks, though some were not reported to police.
\n\tThe list lengthens. Openly gay Matthew McLeod was on his way to his job as a hair dresser when six black people called him \u201cfaggot\u201d before the Knockout Game began.
\n\tAt least two bicyclists were also attacked in 2011.
\n\tEarlier this year, the attacks started again. In May, a 30-year-old man who is too scared to allow police to release his name, was beaten by a group of up to a dozen black people.
\n\tPolice say it appears to be another example of the Knockout Game. One man was arrested, the others at large.
\n\tIn March of this year, an unconscious Pete Kruchowski was found in the early morning in the middle of the street, near his bike, which showed little sign of damage.
\n\tKruchowski suffered skull fractures, broken bones, a punctured lung, and bruises.
\n\tAt first, some said Kruchowski was the latest victim of the Knockout Game. He was found in the same area as Quain. Later, police said it was just a bike accident.
\n\tKruchowski suffered brain injuries and cannot remember.
\n\tUmar Lee is a St. Louis writer, activist and boxing coach. In his video blog and in an interview, he says police ignore many Knockout Game assaults because they make the city look bad.
\n\tAlmost all of the perpetrators are black and the victims are not, he says. But the boxing coach knows why:
\n\tMost of the people who get beat up are vegans, gays, artists, non-violent types,\u201d he said. \u201cMany are kids from the suburbs or recent immigrants. People who are not prepared to defend themselves. There are white neighborhoods \u2013 blue collar, middle class neighborhoods \u2013 where these folks will not go because they know that people there are willing to defend themselves.
\n\tOn Monday April 23rd, 2012, an elderly lady was attacked by a group of teenagers at the bus stop on Grand and Page. There has been no media coverage of this event. I have met several victims and the story is always the same going back to 2005.
\n\tSt. Louis police and others say the attacks have been happening in waves since 2006. In 2009, in Columbia, Mo., security video shows a group of nine black people stalking a man into a parking garage.
\n\tThey hit him, knock him down, kick him, then run away. Soon, however, they return, picked him up, hit him some more and kick him again.
\n\tIn St. Louis, police say there have been about 20 Knockout Game episodes in the last two years.
\n\tAccording to people who post on St. Louis news sites where comments about the Knockout Game are permitted, that is a low estimate.
\n\tA very low estimate, says the Riverfront Times News.
\n\tThe RFT found one of the game players who said the number of victims was more than 20:
\n\t\u201cBased on our intelligence, we believe it\u2019s an isolated group of maybe five to nine kids,\u201d said Police Chief Daniel Isom.
\n\tLocal teens say it\u2019s far more popular than that.
\n\t\u201cI\u2019d say maybe ten to fifteen percent of kids play Knockout King,\u201d Aaron Davis, who\u2019s eighteen and lives in south city, adding that he never took part. \u201cIt\u2019s not a whole school, but it\u2019s a nice percentage.\u201d
\n\tSome former participants maintain Davis\u2019 estimate is too low.
\n\t\u201cEverybody plays,\u201d says eighteen-year-old Brandon Demond, a former participant who provided only his first and middle names for publication.
\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s a game for groups of teens to see who can hit a person the hardest,\u201d explains Brandon, who\u2019s standing with a group of friends on Grand Boulevard as a police officer listens nearby. \u201cIt\u2019s a bunch of stupid \u2026 little dudes in a group, like we are now. See this dude walkin\u2019 up behind me?\u201d \u2013 Brandon gestures to a longhaired man walking toward him on the sidewalk \u2013 \u201cwe could just knock him out right now.\u201d
\n\tSt. Louis seems to be the most popular place for the game, but it is not the only place. Attorney and writer John Bennett says the game is also played in Illinois, Massachusetts and New Jersey.
\n\tIn Chicago, two men were recently charged with murder after playing the Knockout Game while a third man filmed it and posted it on Facebook.
\n\tIn May of this year, a gang of 15 to 20 black people attacked and beat three people in a downtown St. Louis park.
\n\tSome say that was not the Knockout Game but just a violent black mob that occasionally swoops into downtown \u2013 in numbers as large as 1,000 \u2013 and beats, steals and destroys property there much as other violent mobs have done hundreds of times in the last two years in more than 60 cities.
\n\tSt. Louis has a lot of those as well, especially in an area known as The Delmar Loop.
\n\tMany are on video.
\n\tIt\u2019s another example of racial violence the local media is curiously reluctant to report on.
\n\tAn editorial from the Post-Dispatch gives a clue as to why:
\n\tReporter Denise Hollinshed of the Post-Dispatch talked to some kids outside of Roosevelt High School, one of whom acknowledged that he\u2019d taken part in the \u201cknockout king\u201d game.
\n\t\u201cKnockout king is a thrill,\u201d the kid told her. \u201cIt makes you want to keep doing it every day.\u201d
\n\tSure, the kid said, he knew he could hurt somebody. But he added, \u201cYou don\u2019t know them, so why care about hurting them?\u201d
\n\tThat\u2019s a chilling statement. It reflects an almost sociopathic lack of empathy.
\n\tOn the other hand, the more you think about it, it perfectly captures today\u2019s zeitgeist, the spirit of the times.
\n\tWhy not foreclose on homes without giving the homeowners a chance to work out their mortgages? Why not let 50 million people go without health insurance? Why not tilt the table so all the money runs down to one end? You don\u2019t know them, so why care about hurting them?
\n\tIt\u2019s not like you punched them in the head.<\/p>\n
No replies were posted for this topic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Black mobs’ Knockout Game raising alarmsDeath, brain injury reported after cases of attackers coldcocking passersby Editor\u2019s 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…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-we-live-in"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1042\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}