Buses weren’t running on Wednesday, so the coach at Edison Tech, a city high school, arranged for a school bus to pick up his boys at a central meeting spot on Main Street in Rochester to take them to a scrimmage with another school. While the boys were standing around waiting, this is what the cops said they did:
The police report says the students were obstructing “pedestrian traffic while standing on a public sidewalk…preventing free passage of citizens walking by and attempting to enter and exit a store…Your complainant gave several lawful clear and concise orders for the group to disperse and leave the area without compliance.”
Three of the boys were arrested, the coach was threatened with arrest, and the coach was told by one of the police officers that the cop wished he had a big enough vehicle to arrest the whole team. The parents of the boys who were arrested had to post $200 bail to get them out in time for Thanksgiving.
The interview with the coach is worth watching because he’s clearly pained by the whole thing.
BruceFromOhio
How different this story would have turned out if all the kids had been white.
Higgs Boson's Mate
Congregating While Black for the Purpose of Football, eh?
dpm (dread pirate mistermix)
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Basketball, even worse.
KG
I wonder how many people were actually prevented from passing or entering/exiting the store
Svensker
But Obama is black. Therefore, there is no racism. Obviously these young thugs and their thug coach were acting thuggishly.
(This makes me heartsick.)
KG
@dpm (dread pirate mistermix): well, what do you suspect 15 of them, standing around wearing the same color clothes, obviously any reasonable person with, ahem, conventional views, would figure they’re a gang and the police officer was obviously protecting shoppers from these hooligans
/winger
Villago Delenda Est
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Nearly as bad as presidentin’ while blah.
greennotGreen
I would be interested in hearing from the people who were being “obstructed” from moving freely on the sidewalk. I don’t think “fear of being near young black men” should be interpreted to mean the young men were at fault. Has anyone called the ACLU yet?
rikyrah
Don’t even have to ask what color they are.
rikyrah
Their crime-waiting for a bus while Black
John
I’m stunned by the lack of racist defenders of the police in the comments section of the linked article. What kind of local news website is RochesterHomepage.net running?
Villago Delenda Est
@KG:
Well, people with conventional views would gag at the sight of 15 identically dressed young men standing on a sidewalk.
Hell, 15 identically dressed young men is nearly four full fire teams!
MoeLarryAndJesus
Cops who complain about being called pigs should just shut up and stop making excuses for this sort of bullshit.
dpm (dread pirate mistermix)
@John: That’s channel 8 news, seems like they keep their comments cleaned up. Also, the reporter, Rachel Barnhart, has a good following of intelligent readers so that helps too.
Yatsuno
@rikyrah: What IS it with you people and buses anyway? First it was that uppity Rosa Parks woman, then that boycott of good Christian drivers in Montgomery, and now this? It’s like it’s intentional, or something.
/wingnut
Suffern ACE
All they needed to do was clear their bus trip with the police like everyone else does. If they’d had the proper permits to travel, they’d be free now.
Another Holocene Human
If only the police could be arrested for so little.
Btw, where are our dear Snowden-lovers? Surely they can come out and protest for this outrage against civil liberties? It’s like two Assanges, one Manning, and five Mirandas all in one!
Another Holocene Human
BTW–serious question–how do I deal with biased people who don’t think they’re biased? You know, unconscious racism? IOW they have people of different gender and color doing the same kind of shit but some get rewarded and others punished. Some of it’s working the refs, but some of it is just… there’s no there there, so I can only step back and say, I see a pattern here. So how do I fight that?
Elmo
Haven’t you people heard? There is an epidemic of Black Mob ViolenceTM in this country! Who knows how many Knockout Games or Polar Bear Hunts this hero police officer prevented that day!
Elmo
@Suffern ACE:
Very nice.
Yatsuno
@Another Holocene Human: This might help. Jay Smooth is kinda awesome on a lot of levels.
KG
@Another Holocene Human: stepping back and pointing out the pattern is probably the best way. if you’re too confrontational about it, they’ll blow you off as a hysteric.
c u n d gulag
@dpm (dread pirate mistermix):
Thankfully, yes, baskeball, NOT football!
Basketball teams have much smaller rosters than football teams, so a gathering of black kids on a basketball team on the street would only seem to the frightened white folks to be more like a gang meeting.
If this were a football team, the white complainant(s) might have felt that they were in the middle of the Watts, or Detroit, or Newark riots – or the LA riots after the LAPD used Rodney King’s cranium for nightstick batting-practice, and the rest of his body for place-kicking practice.
PsiFighter37
Dare I say they were BWB (Ballin’ While Black)?
I wonder how you get cops, security, etc. to stop racial profiling. There’s been a bit of a ruckus in NYC lately because you’ve had black shoppers at Barney’s and Macy’s getting stopped for SWB (Shopping While Black). You know, because there’s absolutely, positively no way that African-Americans can afford to buy these things, right?
It’s pretty sickening. Of course, Jay-Z didn’t let affect any of the endorsements he’s got going on with these companies.
Ash Can
@Another Holocene Human:
1) Explain that racism/sexism doesn’t just mean being openly hostile toward minorities/women
2) Point out how their particular biases fit that expanded, more accurate definition
dr. bloor
Wait, what? Downtown Rochester actually has anyone left in it to obstruct?
Davis X. Machina
@Villago Delenda Est: It’s a minyan and a half, but only if they all have payess.
ruemara
@Another Holocene Human: Not enough white guys porn wanking being threatened. Metadata gathering is always the worse crime.
aimai
I get that the police may have received complaints from hysterical racist pedestrians–but the proper role for the police is not to enforce every asshole hysteric’s request. Sure, you have to respond to citizen complaints but you don’t have to validate them. Having interviewed the kids and the coach the police should have left them alone. It boggles the mind that they chose to do anything different.
Anya
These young thugs and their master thug ‘coach’ are lucky they were not arrested for possession of a weapon when they were early armed with a sidewalk.
MoeLarryAndJesus
@Anya: Or intent to exist.
VFX Lurker
Earlier this year nearly 500 VFX artists gathered in Hollywood to protest the Oscars. We had no permit, so everyone had to keep walking on the sidewalk in a loop for three hours. 500 people standing still would have been an invitation to get arrested by the cops for blocking storefronts and pedestrian traffic.
That was 500 people, though. I didn’t think the same rules applied to 15 people.
TO'P123
@Anya: who knows how many intimidating hoodies there were being worn (in Rochester in late November). The surprise is no SWAT team with all that menace on one sidewalk.
NotMax
Thankful the gathering didn’t take place in Florida.
polyorchnid octopunch
Just another day in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
FWIW, it’s not any better up here. Just different ethnicities that get the treatment.
TOP123
Why moderation? I think I played nice…!
Ah–b/c I varied my oh so bland and unoriginal initials-based nym ever so slightly? Next time I’ll at least try to think of something good!
rikyrah
when the HELL did it get to the point where a store can refuse CASH??!?!?!
Here we go…another instance of SHOPPING WHILE BLACK
…………
Black Customers Say Buy Buy Baby Refused Their Money
By Ann Givens and Pei-Sze Cheng
Two cousins who say their cash was refused when they tried to pay for more than $1,000 in baby gear at a Long Island Buy Buy Baby believe they were turned away because they are black. Pei-Ze Cheng reports.
Two cousins who say their cash was refused when they tried to pay for more than $1,000 in baby gear at a Long Island Buy Buy Baby believe they were turned away because they are black.
Damon and David Harvey say they were only trying to make a splash at a family baby shower when they brought three big-ticket items to the register at the superstore in Garden City.
But their festive mood quickly faded when the store clerk brought
their $1,173 in cash back to a supervisor, who then told them that their cash was no good.
The cousins say they now believe they were discriminated against because of their race – a charge the store vigorously denies.
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/investigations/Buy-Buy-Baby-Black-Customers-Discrimination-Claim-Cash-Long-Island-233367461.html
rikyrah
NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly’s ex-aide was forced out of job for defending African-American coworker: lawsuit
Katherine Lemire claims Michael Stapleton Associates retaliated against her after she went to bat for Chanissa Green. MSA Vice President of Operations Joe Atherall allegedly warned the human resources assistant to not wear her hair in braids, telling her it looked ‘ghetto.’
By Daniel Beekman / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
A former federal prosecutor who served as Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly’s NYPD special counsel says she was forced out of her job by a leading security company because she stood up for an African-American colleague against racial discrimination.
Katherine Lemire clocked Michael Stapleton Associates with a lawsuit Tuesday, claiming company brass drove her to resign.
Lemire, who was president of MSA Investigations until she quit last
month, says she went to bat for Chanissa Green after MSA Vice President of Operations Joe Atherall warned the human resources assistant to not wear her hair in braids.
“When someone like me … sees someone with a style like that, we think ghetto – not professional,” Green reported that Atherall said, according to Lemire’s Manhattan federal court lawsuit. “I’ll tell you what’s beautiful: my daughter, with blond hair and blue eyes.”
Lemire says MSA honchos, including company chairman George Harvey, “whitewashed” a discrimination probe and terminated another employee over his handling of the investigation.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/raymond-kelly-ex-aide-forced-job-lawsuit-article-1.1530760#ixzz2m9QMHvNS
Ahh says fywp
@Ash Can: But it’s not a friend, it’s a workplace situation. How do I trick one of the offenders (who doesnt realize he is one) into actually fighting this battle for me?
If I point out the pattern they ALWAYS point to something ineffable and visceral that just won’t be reflected in the record for why they treated that person that way.
Aji
@rikyrah: Yup.
Aji
@rikyrah: [Snort] Garden City. Big surprise there. They were afraid the Hempstead on the dollar bills might be contagious.
fuckwit
I was completely baffled by this story until I looked at the comments, and realized “oh, they were black, it’s racism”.
There is zero, no, none, zip, nada, nil, bupkis, NO way this would have happened if the kids were white.
Bobby Thomson
This is the first local paper web site I’ve seen with comments not dominated by racist asshats.
The police better lawyer up. This stinks to high heaven.
rikyrah
November 27, 2013 11:19 AM
Thanks to Obamacare, One Million People Now Have Health Insurance
By James Wimberley
There’s one group of Americans who have a special reason to celebrate Thanksgiving: the million who now have medical insurance for the first time, thanks to Barack Obama and the Affordable Care Act.
I’ll justify the number after the jump. For now: welcome to civilization.
I know, I know: ACA doesn’t create a fully universal system, it’s complicated and kludgy compared to single payer, the federal website was launched as leaky as a sieve and is being repaired as it goes, it’s uncertain whether ACA will rein in healthcare costs, there are over 30 million more uninsured to go, yadda yadda. We’ll be talking about these problems many times. For now, Americans should celebrate a milestone.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ten-miles-square/2013/11/thanks_to_obamacare_one_millio047995.php
fuckwit
@Bobby Thomson: Yeah, but the paper’s editors are not clean themselves. I like how they made ABSOLUTELY DAMN SURE to quote the kids literally, including their Ebonics English, and made DAMN SURE to pick the kids with the most African-American-sounding names to quote too. And, I love the headline next to the story “Saturday is the day President Obama promised to have the federal website running.” Right. So you have entitled white folks running the paper, I guess they do their privilege more subtly up there.
fuckwit
@rikyrah: “Legal tender for all debts, public and private”, is pretty unambiguous. Sue ther fuckers, or even criminal prosecution might be in order, maybe Treasury should get involved. I bet they’d not be too happy if people stopped accepting dollars.
fuckwit
@greennotGreen: “or the right of the people peaceably to assemble” is pretty fucking unambiguous too. Public sidewalk. Public street. Peaceably assembled. The cops have got nothing here. Slam dunk for the ACLU.
rikyrah
Here’s How The Virginia Recount Will Work
Daniel Strauss – November 27, 2013, 3:47 PM EST7591
A recount of the razor thin attorney general race in Virginia is officially on.
Virginia State Sen. Mark Obenshain’s (R) campaign formally filed for a recount Wednesday. The move, long expected, came just two days after the Virginia State Board of Elections certified Obenshain’s opponent, state Sen. Mark Herring (D), as the winner of the race by a tiny 165-vote margin. Because Herring’s margin of victory is within 1 percent of the more than 2 million votes tallied in the race, either Obenshain or Herring could have requested a recount.
So here’s what happens now.
A three-judge panel is formed for overseeing the election process. The panel, made up of the chief judge of the Richmond Circuit Court, Bradley B. Cavedo, and two other judges appointed by the Supreme Court of Virginia will oversee the recount. Most of the rules for the recount are already established but the panel will handle setting some of the procedures for the recount as well as any complaints either the Obenshain campaign or Herring campaign has about how the recount is going. The panel will hold hearings roughly a week after the Obenshain campaign’s recount petition has been filed to establish the specific dates and procedures for the recount.
The Obenshain campaign said in a conference call with reporters Wednesday morning that it expected the recount to happen sometime in mid-December and that it would likely take a day, possibly two, for all the ballots to be recounted.
This recount will be different from previous Virginia recounts in that all ballots counted through optical scan will be rescanned again. That’s in contrast to the 2005 attorney general recount between Bob McDonnell (R) and Creigh Deeds (D). State law during that recount said that the three-judge panel had to re-tabulate scanned ballots by hand. In 2008, Deeds sponsored legislation changing the law so all scanned ballots went through optical scan machines again instead of a hand recount. All other types of ballots cast in the race, including provisional and absentee, will be hand counted again.
The State Board of Elections has also issued directions to vote counters for so-called “undervote” ballots (ballots that aren’t completely filled out) and “overvote” ballots (ballots where the voter filled in bubbles for both candidates but also indicated a preference for one). Those ballots will be also be recounted by hand.
During the original tallying Republicans criticized how votes were counted in Fairfax County, the state’s most populous and which Herring won. Voters there were given extra time to appear at voting locations and argue the validity of provisional ballots cast. Republican attorneys argued that the extra time violated the equal protection rights of provisional voters. That argument seemed like something Obenshain’s campaign would bring up later to try and stop those ballots from being counted in a recount but on Wednesday lawyers for the Republican state senator said there are no current plans to fight recounting the Fairfax votes.
The chances that Obenshain could flip the race in his favor aren’t great.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/here-s-how-a-recount-in-the-virginia-attorney-general-race-will-work
Bobby Thomson
And, with the clueless assistance of mistermix, Balloon Juicers prove once again in the very next thread above that they care only about the civil liberties of white people. As of this comment, there are already twice as many comments in that thread and I fully expect it to hit at least 300, if not a full T.U., while this one withers on the vine.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
Fucking pigs in Rochester. I hate them. Shootings happen almost daily and yet if there is an anti war demonstration with ten people there are 35 cop cars surrounding it. I really should just accept reality and buy a Dunkin Donuts franchise.
PIGL
@Bobby Thomson: Please tell me, how many comments on this thread would you consider the minimum necessary the satisfy your apparent demand that all outrages be treated equally—from the abuse of power by two dumb cops in a city whose voters could fix that in a single election, to the behaviour of global corrupting entire national governments in order to ensure that economic power be immune from political action for the rest of eternity. Because that’s a white people lifestyle choice.
Botsplainer
@PIGL:
Free up the Black Bloc, man…..
ruemara
Pardon, I had no idea Sarah Palin was now a leftist.
Bobby Thomson
@PIGL: shorter PIG: hey, that other stuff might actually affect ME!
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@PIGL:
Institutional racism can be fixed with a single election? Funny how that didn’t work in 2008, or 2012, or, like, ever in the history of the United States.
That’s so stupid I can’t believe your own brain didn’t explode to prevent your fingers from typing the words.
Aji
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Institutional racism doesn’t show up in his world, so it’s all good.
Robin
My heart bleeds for this man. Is there anything UGLIER than racism? As a white person, I don’t usually get to see it exposed nakedly as in this instance, and I suppose that as a teacher, ‘tho he’s black, he doesn’t get to see it all that often either. But in this interview you can see him processing the event in the only way that’s explicable… and you can see there’s more sorrow in him than anger… Me, anger is all I’d feel.
mclaren
@Another Holocene Human:
It is grotesque. It is a crass violation of the basic civil liberties of those black kids. The whole incident is disgusting and un-American.