- While Southern California media weren't eager to cover
the Long Beach Halloween hate-crime trial, they were more than ready for
the January 26 verdict - and any subsequent violence - as requests by camera
crews flooded in to Judge Gibson Lee, who denied them all.
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- Even as journalists and spectators crowded Lee's courtroom
to hear, if not photograph, his guilty verdicts against nine of 10 black
juveniles accused of beating three young white women on Halloween last
year, the stereotyping that dogged the racially sensitive trial still rumbled
on, just beneath the surface.
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- Long Beach police planned for violence in case the black
teens were found guilty, setting up extra security at the courthouse, some
city parks - and even at Polytechnic and Jordan high schools, where the
defendants were students.
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- But high school kids in Long Beach did not overreact,
prompting Chris Efychiou of Long Beach Unified School District to remark,
chuckling, "Most of our kids were more concerned about finals than
the verdict."
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- By coincidence, all high schools in Long Beach closed
early on verdict day - at 12:30 p.m., marking the end of finals. But the
Los Angeles Times gave things a much darker spin, stating: "The judge's
pronouncement was deliberately set for Friday afternoon, after high schools
had been dismissed for the week." In fact, the clerk's office confirmed
to the L.A. Weekly, the trial began at 1 p.m. throughout the case, just
as it did on the day the judge delivered the verdict, hardly a "deliberately
set" hour.
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- But that sort of uncomfortable media stereotyping was
par for the course in this trial, which illuminated not just the kids'
hate crime, but the reactions of adults - officials, media, others - as
they struggled to discuss whether black children should be held to standards
that, if the tables were turned, would apply to any mob of 30 or 40 white
kids accused of beating three black women.
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- Black homelessness activist Ted Hayes, sadly assessing
how things turned out, told the Weekly he met with the black parents of
several accused kids, whom he advised to avoid a trial and harsh sentences
by admitting wrongdoing by their kids. His own street advice to "these
out-of-control black kids" would be, he says, "Stop 'cutting
the fool.' "
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- The parents refused to reach out to the district attorney,
Hayes says, painting their children as innocents and enlisting "camera
jockeys like Eddie Jones," and other black leaders who argued without
apology that the kids had done nothing wrong.
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- Says Hayes, "The black community messed this up."
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- Kelly M. Bray, a self-described eyewitness to the mob
that gathered just before the beatings, and who left a comment on the Long
Beach-based Press-Telegram Web site, wrote that a crowd of girls was openly
bullying passersby that night and getting away with it, "crowding
the sidewalk and forcing people with strollers and small children into
the street, telling them, 'I ain't movin'.'"
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- Hayes believes the trial was used by the establishment
in Long Beach, where Halloween crowds have grown meaner each year, to send
"a message to the black community: Your kids can't come over here
and act out."
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- After the verdict, observers tried to explain what led
to the attacks. Karl Rowe, an uncle of one of the convicted juveniles,
wondered if hip-hop culture could have fanned cultural misunderstandings
about the anti-white slurs hurled at the beaten girls.
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- On the other side of the fence, Joe Hicks, a black mediator
with the nonprofit group Community Advocates in Los Angeles, while agreeing
that hip-hop and gangsta rap often refer to "white boys" and
"white bitches," nevertheless insists that "hip-hop isn't
to blame for the beatings those young women got."
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- After Lee's ruling, a throng of TV crews focused on the
defense attorneys, community activists, and friends and family members
of the perpetrators, led by Eddie Jones, president of the Los Angeles Civil
Rights Association, chanting, "No justice, no peace," and Tony
Muhammad, regional minister for the Nation of Islam, declaring that not
all of the children were guilty.
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- The father of one 14-year-old female perpetrator told
the cameras, "Obviously, something happened. I apologize to the victims
as a father, and I sympathize." A black mother, however, insisted,
"To the general community, our kids did not play a part in this. They
were there, but they did not fight."
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- If the nine convicted youths were merely swept up in
the melee, why haven't they spoken up and named the real perps?
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- Cameron Bonner, who works in gang abatement at Common
Unity Respecting Everyone, fears that an unspoken code of the streets -
even in middle-class black communities - hurt the teens. Says Bonner, who
believes a gang of older black boys is to blame, "The kids got caught
up in a shit storm, and they know: Once you open your mouth, you gotta
come home someday."
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- Project Islamic Hope activist Najee Ali - who was so
upset by media underplaying the unusual story and so angry at the black
leadership for pooh-poohing the mob behavior that he held a march for the
victims - wrote in an e-mail to the Weekly, "The saddest thing was
watching Eddie Jones and other South L.A. activists breaking their necks
trying to get in front of the TV cameras... embarrassing the rest of the
black community by saying the witnesses and victims of the beatings had
lied about what happened."
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- Agreeing with Hayes, Ali wrote that the black parents'
"public lack of remorse and contrition towards the victims helped
turn public sympathy against the defendants" and scuttled a deal offered
by the D.A. - probation with no jail time.
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- Meanwhile, Hicks, of Community Advocates, who is also
a former director of the Los Angeles City Human Relations Commission, says
that while some black parents may have been out of touch when they insisted
"their kids do nothing but homework, run track and go to church,"
other parents had "the same street-culture attitudes that their kids
showed."
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- Adds Hicks, regardless of the light-touch media coverage,
"Gang involvement is all over this case... They have the right kids.
There might be more out there, there were as many as 40 kids, but these
kids were involved in the beatings."
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- Tracy Manzer, the Press-Telegram reporter who covered
the case more thoroughly than any other reporter in California, says that
while the black teens were lauded as scholars and athletes, even by some
media that never checked their facts, Judge Lee will see a different side
in reports from probation officers who are interviewing teachers, coaches
and others.
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- While one girl was touted as having received a USC track
scholarship, USC's track coach told Manzer that her grades hadn't been
good enough. Moreover, several of the kids have records of assault and
threatening behavior. All of this goes to Judge Lee for sentencing consideration.
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- Manzer says that before the verdicts, she made an effort
to avoid "[trying] the suspects in the paper," but is now researching
a story on the teens and their families.
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- Community activists on both sides, contacted by the Weekly,
were disappointed over the lack of national coverage of what was, essentially,
a man-bites-dog tale. Most believed that, had it been a white-on-black
crime involving a mob of 30 white kids, the media would have been all over
it.
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- Earl Ofari Hutchinson, one of the rare national columnists
to write about it, argued early on that it was unprecedented to see such
young girls charged with such a vicious crime, making it a national story.
And on January 27, Times reporter Joe Mozingo described the case as having
caused a big stir, writing, "As the case went to trial, it resonated
beyond Long Beach, generating heated discussion on talk radio and drawing
national media attention."
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- But in fact, the lack of national attention was one reason
the story interested Steve Holmes, Washington Post deputy national editor
for domestic affairs. He told the Weekly he saw it as a national story
and was intrigued by the black-on-white aspects of the hate crime. Yet
like The New York Times, the Post ran a single story.
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- Doug Otto, attorney for the three white victims, continually
urged his clients not to follow the news, and worked "like crazy to
keep them off the news." He needn't have tried so hard - few were
interested.
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- http://www.laweekly.com/news/news/long-beach-hate-crime-verdict/15545/
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