Posted on 11/23/2009 3:15:26 PM PST by Mount Athos
Peter DeQuattro, a 25-year-old cook, exited the Mall Ride at Civic Center Station around 8:30 p.m. on Nov. 8, after his shift at a Lower Downtown bar.
His next recollection was writhing on a gurney in the back of an ambulance, an eye swollen shut and adrenaline pumping as EMTs struggled to restrain him.
DeQuattro, who is white, was one of the most recent men targeted in a downtown-centered spree of attacks where small groups of black men and youths — many with admitted gang ties — tried to knock out white or Latino men with whacks to the head. They sometimes stole from them or taunted them with racial epithets.
DeQuattro never knew what hit him, though police have told him three men blindsided him from behind and then pummeled his face while he struggled from the ground to fight them off. In the process, they broke a bone just above his eye. The maroon bruise is just starting to fade, two weeks later.
"I usually don't have to worry about these things," said DeQuattro, hinting that his 6-foot, 4-inch stature normally deters would-be muggers. In this case, it might have been an incentive. "I never thought I would be the victim of a hate crime."
At the time, he assumed some drug addict had mugged him for a fix, though police found his wallet and cellphone discarded a short distance from where he was jumped.
But he was shocked when Denver police announced Friday that they'd been investigating the spree of similar assaults in tourist areas like the 16th Street Mall and LoDo for four months and had arrested 32 suspects.
Police apprehended a 33rd man, Torrence McCall, when he turned himself in Sunday afternoon after first calling a local television station.
A gang-prevention leader, the Rev. Leon Kelly, has suggested the assaults are being videotaped and used to show how quickly the assailants can knock out their victims. According to Kelly, the recordings are traded on the black market and bolster street credibility.
The 26 attacks that police know about have followed a similar pattern. A small group of black men approach their white or Latino victim. Sometimes, racial epithets are used to taunt victims before they're attacked. But often, they're sucker-punched with "a whack to the head" and sometimes robbed, said Lt. Matt Murray.
He could not say whether the suspects had videotaped the assaults, though he said security cameras caught many of them. He also declined to say how police knew racial epithets were used, deferring to the district attorney's office.
Managers and owners in the bars along Blake and Market streets, which get some of the heaviest weekend traffic, say they first heard some information about the rash of attacks in September, when police revealed the incidents were linked but did not say they were racially motivated.
Many owners and managers in LoDo, like Sports Column bar manager Doug Illingworth, said off-duty police provide weekend security and had told personnel to be on the lookout.
"We had to make sure. That's what an investigation is," Murray said. "One of the real struggles, we had a lot of victims that didn't come forward or who had no idea what happened to them."
But the word that white men were among the targets never got to DeQuattro, who works at Swanky's on Blake Street.
"These guys are going away for a long time, and I'm really glad," DeQuattro said. "You really don't have anything better to do than assault a stranger and break their face?"
You folks had better be prepared to defend yourselves. Nobody else is, got a cop in your pocket??
How’s that multiculti working out for you there, Denver?
Scary. My son and I were in downtown Denver back in October on Saturday afternoon. We were in the area of 19th and Lawrence - Sakura Square. Would have beennice that word got out on this but again, the LSM won’t permit that so these thugs can be better caught.
ching-ching-pow!
I suspect the incidence of these attacks would drop steeply if 6 or 7 of the 32 suspects ended up on the coroner’s slab as a result of “acute lead poisoning”.
The best way to fight “hate crimes” such as this is with a .45 and a concealed carry permit.
Got back Thursday night from 4 days right there, at a hotel about a block away from Civic Center Station, on the Mall. Ugh.
The black gangs were doing these suckerpunch-n-runs for gang initiation on 6th street (Austin) earlier this year. It didn’t last long. APD shut ‘em down pretty quickly.
If he hedges, ask which half of his "African American" identity he claims allegiance to.
Cheers!
Never attack an old man. He knows he can’t win in a fair fight, he is from a generation that’s not willing to forfeit their lives, he knows he has only one option and he is driven to survive.
Should one of these lowlife scum sucking wastes of human flesh attack me, I will do my best to quickly introduce them to God.
These seem to be largely ambush attacks.
Not a lot to do about those, other than being aware and not in the wrong place.
According to the PC crowd, he can't be the victim of a hate crime. He could only be the cause of one. What crap this is.
This type of stuff being shushed-up due to the twisted thinking of the PCers in the Police force, government and media.
They could give-a-crap less if you or anyone else gets his head bashed in because nobody bothered to warn others that hoards of feral apes are preying on innocent white folks - just for s**ts and giggles.
I have yet to hear Obowma comment about how stupidly his homies have been acting.
Laws that we make don’t apply to us, right Bambi?
Diversity is our strength...(/s)
Before being widely adopted by human factors scientists in the 1990s, the term was first used by United States Air Force (USAF) fighter aircrew returning from war in Korea and Vietnam (see Watts, 2004). They identified having good SA as the decisive factor in air-to-air combat engagements—the "ace factor" (Spick, 1988). Survival in a dogfight was typically a matter of observing the opponent's current move and anticipating his next move a fraction of a second before he could observe and anticipate one's own. USAF pilots also came to equate SA with the "observe" and "orient" phases of the famous observe-orient-decide-act loop (OODA Loop) or Boyd cycle, as described by the USAF fighter ace and war theorist Col. John Boyd. In combat, the winning strategy is to "get inside" your opponent’s OODA loop, not just by making your own decisions quicker, but also by having better SA than the opponent, and even changing the situation in ways that the opponent cannot monitor or even comprehend. Losing one's own SA, in contrast, equates to being "out of the loop."
Guess what Colorado city bans the carrying of firearms? Denver rots.
This is not a new phenomenon. I have seen the sucker punch robbery all my career and many times it’s old people or women as the victim.
Another favorite tactic is to say “Excuse me sir/maam, you know what time it is?” Then when you are looking at your watch or cell phone they haymaker you and take whatever they want. Don’t fall for it. You can tell you are about to get assaulted when they approach head slightly down or on a swivel, looking at you peripherally. They will be looking for witnesses or silent cues/support from their compatriots.
I personally find a reason to get my left hand up near my face and my right to my carry side if approached by multiple subjects. Make eye contact but remember it’s the hands that kill and they are almost always hidden in pockets just prior to the punch.
Here is good example of the thugs technique. http://www.break.com/usercontent/2007/6/Sucker-punch-at-McDonalds-321220.html
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