Knockout Game - A hate crime

[Replicant]

Well it is at least some of the time. A federal prosecutor as charged a 27yo white male with a hate crime for playing the "knockout game" and targeting a 79yo black male. The victim in the assault had his jaw broken, the assailant wanted to see if he would make the national news.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... -suspect-/

My question, of course, is if the dozens of black teens in New York, Chicago, Philly, and other places will be charged with hate crimes since a vast majority of their victims have been white. To date only one black teen has been charged with a hate crime with the explanation being he specifically targeted a jewish person.

Seriously, does Eric Holder send out weekly emails to all Justice Department officials reminding them that he is the boogeyman and every attempt should be made to make his Justice Department out to be blatantly racist.

[Flagg]

There is no "knockout game" you fucking idiot.

[Replicant]

There is no "knockout game" you fucking idiot.

Excellent spin work there twat bag.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Replicant, do you realize how much you sound like one of those "I'm not racist, but" guys right now? This guy has admitted that he specifically chose his target based on race, that does not mean others do. This is exactly like the manufactured "Where's the outrage" bullshit pulled during the Zimmerman case.

[Flagg]

There is no "knockout game" you fucking idiot.

Excellent spin work there twat bag.

There. Is. No. Knockout. Game. It. Is. An. Urban. Legend.

[Maraxus]

November 22, 2013
Police Unsure if Random Attacks Are Rising Threat or Urban Myth
By CARA BUCKLEY

Fear swept through Borough Park, Brooklyn, as soon as the news got out: A young man was randomly assaulted by strangers early Friday morning, and the attack was possibly part of the so-called Knockout Game.

Four men were arrested, but on Friday night only one was charged and the others were released.

The attack added to a growing log of reports of such crimes in the Northeast and beyond. Young assailants were randomly picking unlucky targets and trying to knock them out with just one punch.

Yet police officials in several cities where such attacks have been reported said that the “game” amounted to little more than an urban myth, and that the attacks in question might be nothing more than the sort of random assaults that have always occurred.

And in New York City, police officials are struggling to determine whether they should advise the public to take precautions against the Knockout Game — or whether in fact it existed.

“We’re trying to determine whether or not this is a real phenomenon,” Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said on Friday. “I mean, yes, something like this can happen. But we would like to have people come forward and give us any information they have.”

Dread about being singled out for attacks has taken root in Jewish communities in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Crown Heights, Borough Park and Midwood, according to Dov Hikind, a state assemblyman.

Two weeks ago, a 78-year-old woman in Brooklyn reported being punched in the head, with her assailant fleeing without touching her shopping bags or her pocketbook.

This followed sporadic reports of similar recent attacks in Crown Heights, Mr. Hikind said, including one on a 19-year-old Hasidic man who said he had been approached by eight men and then punched in the face by one of them, in what the police said was a possible hate crime.

Then, at 2:45 a.m. on Friday, on the border of Borough Park, a 24-year-old man found himself suddenly boxed in by three men and punched by a fourth. Police said the four men had been out celebrating and were “somewhat intoxicated.” Mr. Kelly said the victim overheard the group discussing “how you knock somebody out.” (Amrit Marajh, 28, of Brooklyn, was charged with assault and with aggravated harassment as a hate crime.)

Whatever the case, a type of panic set in. Mr. Hikind said a girls’ high school in Midwood canceled a Friday evening get-together after nervous parents called the school, expressing concern for their daughters’ safety.

“It’s sick, it’s scary,” said Mr. Hikind, who gathered with other Jewish community leaders last week to discuss the attacks. “It’s like nothing I’ve experienced in my 31 years in office.”

But police officials cautioned that they had yet to see evidence of an organized game spreading among teenagers online, though they have been reluctant to rule out the possibility.

There is particular concern within the department that widespread coverage could create the atmosphere where such a “game” could take hold in New York.

Much news coverage of reported knockout attacks includes 2012 footage from a surveillance camera in Pittsburgh of James Addlespurger, a high school teacher who was 50, being swiftly struck to the ground by a young man walking down an alleyway with some friends. Yet the Pittsburgh police said the attacker insisted the assault was not part of any organized “game.”

“This was just a random act of violence,” Police Commander Eric Holmes said in a televised interview last year. “He stated that he was just having a bad day that day.” The assailant saw Mr. Addlespurger, the commander said, “and decided this was a course of action he was going to take.”

Telecasts have also shown teenagers in Jersey City, their faces blurred, describing knockouts, which they defined as anyone might; someone is struck and knocked out. But they did not report that it was a game.

Bob McHugh, a police spokesman in Jersey City, said there had not been a single reported knockout incident there.

“If there ever was an urban myth, this was it,” he said. Still community concerns spurred by the video prompted a member of the City Council there, Candice Osborne, to post on her Facebook page, “there have been NO reported instances of this type of assault.”

In nearby Hoboken, there was one report of a random assault; in September a man approached by three youths was punched, and died after his head became wedged in a fence between pickets. But Police Chief Anthony P. Falco Sr. of Hoboken said the attack appeared to have been isolated, an assertion repeated by Gene Rubino, a spokesman and assistant prosecutor in the Hudson County prosecutor’s office.

“We keep getting asked that question,” he said, of the Knockout Game, “and there is no noticeable trend.”

Jeffrey Butts, director of the Research and Evaluation Center at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan, said much of the fear sown by the reports may have racial roots.

“There’s an element to who wants to see this through the lens of race,” he said. “The kids in Jersey probably set off racial alarms.”

Police officials in Syracuse said the city had seen two such attacks this year, each fatal, and they were on the lookout for more. The police said that at least one of the assailants said he was playing the Knockout Game.

“I think it’s very real,” Sgt. Tom Connellan said. “As opposed to a motive for assault, be it anger or robbery, this is strictly for a game.”

Joseph Goldstein and J. David Goodman contributed reporting.

Link

Plus Replicant's source is the Washington Times, which really means that this story isn't worth the paper it's printed on.

[TheHammer]

I've found the notion behind "hate crime" penalties being penalized more harshly than otherwise would be the norm to be absolutely asinine. An unprovoked assault/battery should be punished (harshly) the same either way.

As for it being an urban legend, there are more than enough monkey-see-monkey-do morons out there that you certainly could have some real incidents of copy-cat "knock-out-game" attacks. And its not as if it takes a lot of skill, or preparation to attempt this. You read it on the internet, you go to the mall, pick a target and punch them in the head. This isn't the same as say the "HIV Needle in gas pump" urban legends which would be decidedly more difficult for a copy-cat to pull off.

[energiewende]

There is no "knockout game" you fucking idiot.

This seems to be an update of an English phenomenon called "happy slapping" that peaked a while back. A few people died in related attacks, and many more were injured to a greater or lesser degree. I'd be really surprised if at least a couple of dozen people hadn't copied it in the US, or even pre-empted it, since the US is a much larger and more violent country. In case you are sceptical, it even has a wikipedia article with credible (BBC etc) sources.

[LapsedPacifist]

Well, we truly live in a peaceful time when the fearmongers have to dig nationwide to show youth attacks.

And as far as this particular incident being a hate crime... apparently our inner city youth are smart enough to not record their premeditation when they decide to deck someone, unlike this chump from Texas.

[SirNitram]

Remarkable how this crime wave is so lacking in evidence of it's existance. I mean, we could discuss the St. Louis instance, which, it turned out, to be the woman fabricating it out of whole cloth to protect her abusive boyfriend. Well, there WAS a case of a really savage beating around the face and head by a gang in NYC earlier this month.. A group of Hasidics beating the hell out of a black guy. Surely this is proof! Except they were shouting anti-gay slurs, and sadly, there's no big splashy coverage of consistant beatings of gays or those suspected of being gay.

Where does this brainbug(See Mike's site; brilliant concept) come from? Try this: St. Louis Today

But there are powerful, monied interests who want people scared of roving black youths..

[Esquire]

Huh, I didn't know about that. I was about to cite the St. Louis case, too... thanks for heading that off, Nitram.

[Esquire]

Ghetto edit: the original reporting of the St. Louis case, I mean.

[FSTargetDrone]

It's a fake:

Guess What? The ‘Knockout Game’ Is America’s Latest Phony Panic

By Jamelle Bouie

November 25th 201312:32 pm

Much like ‘wilding’ before it, the furor over the ‘knockout game’ bears all the hallmarks of an overblown panic over a crime wave that doesn’t exist.

Have teenagers adopted a new game of random assaults, with the goal of a one-hit “knockout”?

If you’ve been following local news, watching national coverage, or reading your Facebook newsfeed, you might think the answer is “yes.” The Today Show, for instance, reports that “teenagers [are] knocking people out for the fun of it,” targeting “women and children,” with cases “piling up.”

Likewise, CNN writes that “A sick so-called game known as ‘knockout’…is catching the attention of law enforcement throughout the nation,” and USA Today echoes the report with a brief on beefed up police vigilance in cities such as New York, Washington, New Haven, and Philadelphia.

It’s not hard to see why media outlets have latched on to this as an ongoing story. The prospect of random assault from rowdy, aggressive teens is scary, especially if they’re uninterested in theft and just want to attack. It’s as if we’re living in A Clockwork Orange, with our cities under siege by violent young men.

But it’s this media panic—as well as the strongly anecdotal nature of the coverage—that should give us pause before we declare the “knockout game” a national problem. After all, it wouldn’t be the first media furor over teen behavior. Recall the panics over “wilding”—where teenagers were attacking innocent bystanders en masse—or “headlight flashing,” where gang members were marking their victims during nighttime drives. In both cases, you could find instances that fit either description, but in a country with tens of millions of teenagers, where you could find examples of almost any behavior, you need more than a few anecdotes to prove a trend.

With the “knockout game,” we have several cases in a handful of cities, as well as five reported deaths. Victims tell similar stories: They were walking down the street when they were suddenly punched from behind. There’s no doubt that the experience is terrifying and traumatic.

But the question isn’t whether these random assaults happen. Of course they do. The question is whether this is a new dimension of urban crime, or a new name for an old phenomenon. Most of the evidence points to the latter. For starters, it’s not hard to find reports of senseless attacks on innocent bystanders. In 2011 in Washington, D.C., for instance, there were nearly 1,700 assaults excluding guns, including a random attack by a group of teenagers in a subway station. Violent crime is a fact of life in American cities, though it’s infrequent and on the decline, and that includes muggings and attacks by strangers.

Indeed, when asked about the “knockout game,” law enforcement has been skeptical. According to a recent New York Times piece, “[P]olice officials in several cities where such attacks have been reported said that the ‘game’ amounted to little more than an urban myth, and that the attacks in question might be nothing more than the sort of random assaults that have always occurred.”

The case for “myth” is bolstered further by the fact that the “knockout game” has been cited as far back as 1992, when it was compared to “wilding” as an example of dangerous teen behavior. What’s more, several widely circulated stories concerning the game have been debunked by websites such as Snopes, which note that they have no “verifying information.”

On top of all of this, it’s worth emphasizing the broad picture. Overall, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s 2012 crime report, there were an estimated 127,577 assaults with “hands and fists” in American cities with more than 250,000 people, a 0.7 percent increase from the previous year. The “knockout game” may or may not be a new phenomenon, but with a few instances out of tens of thousands of assaults, it’s not a trend, and media outlets shouldn’t treat it as one. A few teens may describe their behavior as a game, but to hold them up as signs of a crime wave is to cherry-pick data and mislead the audience. A little incredulity, in other words, would go a long way.

One last thing: Race is an obvious element in all of this. In almost every report, the assailants are described as young black men, and many of the victims have been white. It’s hard not to see the sensationalized coverage of “knockout”—and before that, “wilding”—as a reflection of our national fear of young black men. Indeed, in the more sinister corners of the Internet, you can find people who argue that these incidents are the opening shots in a “race war” by “feral black youth.”

It should be said the same logic drives the racial profiling behind policies such as “stop and frisk.” Never mind that the vast majority of young black men don’t commit crimes; the behavior of a few turns everyone into a suspect.

Which means that, if the past is any indication, today’s panic over “knockout” is almost certain to become tomorrow’s excuse for justifying our skepticism and fear of black teenagers.

[Iroscato]

Ahhh...'happy slapping'...that takes me back, that does. I remember the Daily Mail frothing about it every other day, as was its primary directive. Speaking of which, I'm guessing the Washington Times is the US equivalent of the Daily Mail?

[Flagg]

Ahhh...'happy slapping'...that takes me back, that does. I remember the Daily Mail frothing about it every other day, as was its primary directive. Speaking of which, I'm guessing the Washington Times is the US equivalent of the Daily Mail?

If the Daily Mail used to be owned by a guy who honestly believed he was the second coming of Christ. Which is ridiculousness because he was Korean and everyone knows Jesus was lilly white.

[Pelranius]

If media goes around reporting about a fake crime wave and said reporting inspires people to actually commit said crime, does the offending media outlet have some level of moral culpability?

[Flagg]

If media goes around reporting about a fake crime wave and said reporting inspires people to actually commit said crime, does the offending media outlet have some level of moral culpability?

I would say yes, because I despise modern media, but then wouldn't an artist bear some moral responsibility if their art in any way inspired acts of harm?

[Channel72]

Urban legends aside, the very concept of a "hate-crime" really only exists because of the existence of historically downtrodden racial underclasses. It's meant to protect minorities from majorities. If there's some black guy targeting white people, it's pretty useless to call it a "hate crime", because white people still dominate everything in terms of economic power and social status in the United States, and there's no history of institutionalized racism against Caucasians. I mean, I'm white and it's seriously pretty awesome. I can even go out at night in a hoodie and nobody will shoot me. I really don't need hate crime laws to protect me.

[Flagg]

Urban legends aside, the very concept of a "hate-crime" really only exists because of the existence of historically downtrodden racial underclasses. It's meant to protect minorities from majorities. If there's some black guy targeting white people, it's pretty useless to call it a "hate crime", because white people still dominate everything in terms of economic power and social status in the United States, and there's no history of institutionalized racism against Caucasians. I mean, I'm white and it's seriously pretty awesome. I can even go out at night in a hoodie and nobody will shoot me. I really don't need hate crime laws to protect me.

They do protect you. If a black guy goes and commits a crime expressly targeting a white person and there is evidence of the motive, you bet your ass they'll be charged with a hate crime.

[LapsedPacifist]

My evidence is anecdotal, but there's a group of people latching onto the "knockout game" to justify their views on race. Just look at the OP's last sentence:

Seriously, does Eric Holder send out weekly emails to all Justice Department officials reminding them that he is the boogeyman and every attempt should be made to make his Justice Department out to be blatantly racist.

It feels like a Benghazi for the stupid. People are getting really concentrated very skewed news reports, and building a narrative that they not only need to be afraid of black people, but that black people are treated favorably by a liberal legal system. It's just offensively stupid.

[Ralin]

Urban legends aside, the very concept of a "hate-crime" really only exists because of the existence of historically downtrodden racial underclasses. It's meant to protect minorities from majorities. If there's some black guy targeting white people, it's pretty useless to call it a "hate crime", because white people still dominate everything in terms of economic power and social status in the United States, and there's no history of institutionalized racism against Caucasians. I mean, I'm white and it's seriously pretty awesome. I can even go out at night in a hoodie and nobody will shoot me. I really don't need hate crime laws to protect me.

They do protect you. If a black guy goes and commits a crime expressly targeting a white person and there is evidence of the motive, you bet your ass they'll be charged with a hate crime.

My understanding has always been that hate crimes aren't about punishing people who kill or assault people for being minorities so much as punishing people who use violence to intimidate communities. Killing someone because they're black or gay is 'just' murder, which is plenty illegal already. Killing someone to send a message to all the blacks or gays living in an area is a whole other level of wrong, just like murder is worse than manslaughter.

Or at least that's how it was explained to me.

[Pelranius]

If media goes around reporting about a fake crime wave and said reporting inspires people to actually commit said crime, does the offending media outlet have some level of moral culpability?

I would say yes, because I despise modern media, but then wouldn't an artist bear some moral responsibility if their art in any way inspired acts of harm?

Well, the artist would presumably make it clear that the art in question is just that art, while media is representing said fake crime wave as established fact.

[Flagg]

Urban legends aside, the very concept of a "hate-crime" really only exists because of the existence of historically downtrodden racial underclasses. It's meant to protect minorities from majorities. If there's some black guy targeting white people, it's pretty useless to call it a "hate crime", because white people still dominate everything in terms of economic power and social status in the United States, and there's no history of institutionalized racism against Caucasians. I mean, I'm white and it's seriously pretty awesome. I can even go out at night in a hoodie and nobody will shoot me. I really don't need hate crime laws to protect me.

They do protect you. If a black guy goes and commits a crime expressly targeting a white person and there is evidence of the motive, you bet your ass they'll be charged with a hate crime.

My understanding has always been that hate crimes aren't about punishing people who kill or assault people for being minorities so much as punishing people who use violence to intimidate communities. Killing someone because they're black or gay is 'just' murder, which is plenty illegal already. Killing someone to send a message to all the blacks or gays living in an area is a whole other level of wrong, just like murder is worse than manslaughter.

Or at least that's how it was explained to me.

That's almost correct. Or more right than wrong. The idea is that the act of killing someone based on their race, sexual preference, religion, etc is in itself an effort to put fear into said community. And hate crime statutes cover everything from the aforementioned murder, to vandalism.

[Flagg]

If media goes around reporting about a fake crime wave and said reporting inspires people to actually commit said crime, does the offending media outlet have some level of moral culpability?

I would say yes, because I despise modern media, but then wouldn't an artist bear some moral responsibility if their art in any way inspired acts of harm?

Well, the artist would presumably make it clear that the art in question is just that art, while media is representing said fake crime wave as established fact.

Point taken. I still can't say I really agree with the sentiment though.

[Channel72]

Urban legends aside, the very concept of a "hate-crime" really only exists because of the existence of historically downtrodden racial underclasses. It's meant to protect minorities from majorities. If there's some black guy targeting white people, it's pretty useless to call it a "hate crime", because white people still dominate everything in terms of economic power and social status in the United States, and there's no history of institutionalized racism against Caucasians. I mean, I'm white and it's seriously pretty awesome. I can even go out at night in a hoodie and nobody will shoot me. I really don't need hate crime laws to protect me.

They do protect you. If a black guy goes and commits a crime expressly targeting a white person and there is evidence of the motive, you bet your ass they'll be charged with a hate crime.

If a black guy goes and commits a crime expressly targeting white people, the entire weight of the US legal system is likely to come down on him hard. Whereas if a white person commits a crime against a black person, in say, Mississippi Florida, we probably need some extra provisions to make sure justice is adequately served. Because black people are scary, you know.