A couple of months ago, an associate of my brother....went to Chattanooga. Stayed downtown in the hotel and pub district. Stepped out just at sundown to have supper and a beer. Barely got three hundred feet from the hotel, when two “gentlemen” passed him (young punks). About ten seconds later, he has this sudden force hitting him from the rear and knocking him out on the ground.
The guy was out for maybe a minute or two. No robbery or such. He comes to....wondering what happened. No one near him at all. A few folks from down the street looking at him but no one reacting. He’s bruised up badly, but more worried about some second attack. He walks back to the hotel. Never reports it to the cops, because he knows it just turns into paperwork.
He gets checked out by his personal doc on Monday, and he’s got a mild concussion. Nothing bad from the deal, but some questions and hostility.
His son sorts through You-Tube for days. He finally finds this video there, and one of the punks video-taped the other jumping this guy. They talk over a cop report now, but a lawyer says to them...you get those sort of people in a court, and they often seek revenge. It’s not advised to do anything.
I was pointed to the YouTube site guy. No location on initial viewing, then I dug into it. This punk is from DC (he’s not a Chattanooga player). It appears that he’s around 17, a drop-out from the DC school system. I get an impression that he’s a drug courier for some crew in DC and makes runs for them. The knockout game was something they simply exported around the nation.
There’s probably a lot more folks out there....who got knocked out, and never came forward. The news in the dark? Well...maybe they will track this and notice a trend particulary in DC. My humble bet is that this trend continues for a few years, and then everyone starts to tote a pistol, and then you start to notice a dead guy or gal on the street who is picked up by the cops....no idea who shot them. And that trend goes for several years.
Life in urban America.....sadly.
The media knows this is happening. They are not that out of the loop. They talk to the police. They are in courtrooms. It has been happening for years. They have decided to keep quiet about it because they don't want to get harassed by civil rights activists, and probably diverse people within their own management. They will only report these as individual incidents with no connection to each other, no trend, and no similarities in rage and age.
Until last week. Maybe it was Thomas Sowell's column on this that finally broke the silence. But for some reason, only after it has been going on for a few years now, and people have died, do they change their policy and begin to report the truth.