By Nicholas Stix
Last updated at 2:38 a.m., on Tuesday, August 17, 2010.
(For update history, see the bottom of this story.)
Bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang!
That was a mope firing into a crowd of revelers at point blank range in Buffalo, in front of the City Grill, between 2:30 and 3 a.m. on Saturday. So far, four people have died from their wounds, with another four men wounded.
It had been a joyous occasion. A local couple that had moved to Texas in 2006, where they worked in a bank, had come home to celebrate their first wedding anniversary with friends and family. And the official celebration was yet to come later that day, with their youngest child set to be christened on Sunday.
But now the bride wears black. And two small children are left fatherless.
Tanisha Mackin’s 30-year-old husband, Danyell, is dead. The couple’s friends, Willie McCaa III, 26; Shawntia McNeil, 27; and Tiffany Wilhite, 32, are likewise dead.
Demario Vass, 29, was shot in the head, is in critical condition, and has been put in a medically-induced coma that according to his uncle, Lawrence Vass, could last from six to eight months.
(Update: 2:12 a.m., Tuesday, August 17: WGRZ reports that the three other survivors, James Robb Jr., 27, Shamar Davis, 30, and Tillman Ward, 27, have all been discharged from Erie County Medical Center, and that Shawntia McNeil and Tiffany Wilhite will both be laid to rest on Friday, following an 11 a.m. viewing and service at noon, at True Bethel Baptist Church.)
Only minutes earlier, the shooter had gotten in a fight, and been thrown out of the restaurant. So, he waited outside.
It was near closing time, and the fight he had been a part of—or possibly threats he had made—was dramatic enough that the restaurant’s managers cleared everyone out of the place, including several other parties, and shut down for the night. And when the anniversary party exited, the shooter was there, waiting for them.
My hardworking reader-researcher, RC, found the only media report that identified the suspect’s race, in Brian Meyer and Maki Becker’s Buffalo News report:
Buffalo Police have taken into custody at least one person who may be connected to the violence. SWAT Team members converged on a home on ... Avenue near Cordova Avenue late this morning. Police were seen taking a black man out of ... in handcuffs as three women, one holding an infant, watched from the porch.
The initial suspect’s name turns out to be Keith Johnson, a 25-year-old parolee. Erie County DA Frank A. Sedita III has dropped the four murder charges against Johnson, but it holding the latter on a parole violation.
The AP’s Carolyn Thompson reports,
"We can see the race, gender, the height, build, the clothing of the perpetrator," Sedita said after City Court Judge Patrick Carney granted the request. "You can see many of the perpetrator's actions. We have him shooting on video."
Still investigators pleaded for witnesses to speak up and warned that the person responsible for the City Grill shootings continued to elude them.
"We have somebody running around out there who shot eight people," Sedita said. "We have an armed man who's extremely dangerous loose in our community."
[NS: Then why isn’t DA Sedita telling the public the “race, gender, height, build, the clothing of the perpetrator,” and releasing the video, so that they can be protected from a mass murderer still at large, and help turn him in? How many more innocents must die, so that public officials and the media don’t offend blacks’ delicate feelings?]
Johnson, 25, of Buffalo, was released on parole in July after serving two years for assault. He remained in jail Sunday on an allegation of a parole violation for being at the bar Saturday, and investigators said he could be a witness in the City Grill case.
Police Commissioner Daniel Derenda said that after Johnson's arrest late Saturday, witnesses began calling to say they had the wrong man. But when investigators arrived to question the callers "half of them disappeared," he said.
"None of them had come forward through the day and they had specific information," Derenda said. "They didn't want to be cooperative."
The commissioner said many people saw the Saturday shootings. More than 100 people were outside the restaurant when police arrived shortly after the 2:30 a.m., he said….
Johnson was arrested by a police SWAT team. Investigators also removed security cameras from around the restaurant Saturday and viewed the images into the evening.
In seeking dismissal of the charges, Sedita cited photo evidence and witness statements.
"I'm not going to prosecute someone for a quadruple homicide unless I'm sure he did it, and I'm not sure he did it," Sedita told the judge as Johnson sat handcuffed during the proceeding.
The police commissioner stood by Johnson's arrest.
People who were at the party identified Johnson by name, one witness picked him out of a photo lineup, Johnson gave inconsistent statements and a search of his home yielded clothing with blood on it, Derenda said. The blood hasn't been tested yet, police said….
The younger of the couple's two children, 7-month-old Destinee, was scheduled to be christened Sunday at Durham Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church, but the ceremony was postponed. Instead, the Rev. George Woodruff called the shooting "just a senseless killing" and prayed for the victims—and the gunman.
"I know some people are not comfortable with that," Woodruff said. "I pray you arrest his spirit as only you can…."
“Stop Snitchin’”
So, scores, possibly even hundreds of people know who the mass murderer is, but refuse to tell the police. Not only the people who saw him shoot eight people know who he is, but friends and relatives who were there but didn’t get a clear look, or who weren’t even there, heard it through the grapevine from the witnesses.
Some of the witnesses took the trouble to call the police, in order to get charges dismissed against a black man who may (or maybe not!) be innocent, but none of the throng of people who know the killer’s identity would help put away a black mass murderer. Their loyalty to the black monster is not only greater than their loyalty to the law, but greater even than their loyalty to their own friends and family. It’s called “Stop snitchin.’”
Although none of the articles I’ve found identified the races of the various victims, the role of “Stop snitchin’” culture in protecting the killer suggests that all were black.
In an earlier version of this article, I used the New York Times version of Carolyn Thompson’s AP article. However, the editors at the Times not only left out Thompson’s name, they heavily censored her story, completely removing the “Stop snitchin’” angle. The version published at Breitbart.com contained all of the information the Times had censored. (I guess that’s yet more proof of Andrew Breitbart’s notorious “racism”!)
Not only is the conduct of those protecting the killer racist and evil, it’s also criminal. Those who know the killer’s identity, but refuse to divulge it to police are guilty of being accessories after the fact, and of obstruction of justice. Not that the authorities will ever impose on racist blacks the laws that whites must live by.
As for asking the city’s black preachers to call for an end to the violence, considering black clergymen’s role nationwide in inciting violence, that’s something of a sick joke (see here, here, and here).
The Buffalo police and/or the local media initially refused to divulge Johnson’s name, even though he was under arrest, and the police were legally obliged, and the media professionally obliged to do so. (And why would they divulge the victims’ names first?)
The Routinization of Urban Terror
The shooter didn’t seem to care who he shot; he just wanted to kill as many people as possible. That sounds familiar.
We heard about that sort of thing a lot during the mid-to-late 1980s, when such terroristic urban shootings were blamed on the crack wars, which were euphemistically referred to as an “epidemic.”
The problem is, the crack wars ended 15 years ago, but the shootings didn’t.
But the national MSM adjusted, by refusing to report on the shootings. Thus, after the Crack Wars officially ended, you would only hear about such shootings in your hometown, if at all. In recent years, getting such news from out of town has required the time-consuming work of scouring the Internet, as RC and my other reader-researchers (David in TN, AL, BR, W, et al.), and my colleagues at American Renaissance and Nivius Vir do. Otherwise, you wouldn’t know about these crimes.
Buffalo’s Diversitopian Demographics
Buffalo is a diversitopia, and thus prime real estate for such action.
The city on Lake Erie was in 1950 93.3% white and boasted 577,393 residents (Table 56, on p. 51). By 2006, it was down 54.1% from that high to 263,030, having lost yet another 10% of its population—from 292,648—in a mere six years. (The shrinkage sounds Detroit-like.) And as whites have left town, the black and Hispanic proportions have grown, to where in 2006 the city was only 48.7% non-Hispanic white, but 38.9% black, 9.1% Hispanic, and 52.8% female. (That leaves 1.8% Asian and 1.5% presumably as “other” or “mixed race/ethnicity.”) And at $29,127, Buffalo’s average household income was less than half that of the U.S. ($60,374) and of Erie County ($60,453).
Such classic diversitopian demographics, with their attendant averages of low IQ, educational failure, weak work ethic, high rates of crime, illegitimacy, and welfare; matriarchy, and the low income that flows from the aforementioned categories are profiles of a failing city. When social scientists such as sociologist William Julius Wilson started talking about the “rust belt” of declining industrial cities—and Buffalo was one of the first to decline—they talked about industry leaving, “jobs disappear[ing],” and the rise of the “underclass,” but turned the causality upside down. The primary cause of those cities’ deterioration was the influx of large numbers of people who refused to do an honest day’s work, obey the law, respect other people’s persons and property and, simply, govern themselves. Such an influx brought with it nothing but trouble.
And where would a major city be without its own massive race riot?
From June 26-July 1, 1967, racist blacks rioted in Buffalo, sealing its fate. In Buffalo as in other northern industrial cities, racist blacks chased away both the white tax base and the industrial job base. While saying all the right things in public, businessmen eventually said “Enough” in private, pulled up stakes, and built factories as far away as China.
Today, Buffalo’s “economic revitalization” consists entirely of taxpayer-subsidized expansion of health care and higher ed. That’s not “economic revitalization,” it’s an economic death spiral.
Is Forbes Now on a Par with Wikipedia?
I checked out The Pretend Encyclopedia, aka Wikipedia, for links to sites with real information and surprise, surprise, hit phony links and phony information.
Footnote 43 claims to derive from “Gibson, Campbell (June 2008). "Population Estimates". Population Division, U.S. Bureau of the Census. Retrieved 2009-11-15.” but links instead to a spam site.
The Pretend Encyclopedia claims, “In 2010 Forbes rated Buffalo the 10th best place to raise a family.”
Not exactly. Although Forbes “reporter” Francesca Levy misleadingly praised “Buffalo, N.Y.,” in her main text, and segued to Buffalo with, “But a city being family-friendly doesn't automatically make it staid,” hitting the “Buffalo” link takes one to a page for the “Buffalo-Niagara Falls, N.Y.” metropolitan area. And as if that weren’t clear enough, Forbes’ Levy emphasizes the “short commutes” to work.
Thus, the anonymous Wikipedian who cited Forbes accurately repeated Levy’s dishonest claim.
(And so it is with all of Forbes’ “cities.” In seven cases, the hyphenated name itself gives away that we are dealing with a metropolitan area, but in all cases, “Commuting Rank” is the third criterion, after “Cost-of-Living Rank” and “Crime Rate Rank.”)
As the blog Indianapolis Crime observes, using demographics for a metropolitan area, while speaking of the city proper, has become a popular way for the boosters of cities increasingly beset by diversity to artificially “reduce” their crime rates.)
Granted, that’s the way middle-class white Americans speak these days. When someone tells you he comes from, say, “Chicago,” that usually means from a nice bedroom community outside the city limits. But such subterfuge has no business in a publication that is meant to inform and enlighten. If its euphemistic approach to reality becomes well-known, Forbes could decline in prestige to the level of TPC. And people don’t pay to read The Pretend Encyclopedia.
But maybe that’s just wishful thinking on my part. Where race is concerned, middle-class whites embrace euphemism in speech, and prudence in action.
The newest reports out of Buffalo say that the shooting was gang-related. But that doesn't really explain anything. After all, it's always something.
Why do these mass shootings keep happening? “It’s a black thing. You wouldn’t
understand.”
Postscript
At the aforementioned Forbes article, one sarcastic critic claimed that unemployment in Buffalo was 14.8%, “One of the highest in the nation.”
Posted by SFORBESJR | 06/07/10 10:40 PM EDT
This might be the worst list ever. Did the state of New York pay you to write this article?
I feel Really bad for the people who read this article and belive Buffalo, Rochester, or Syracuse are in the top 10 of any thing other then unemployment in northeast.
The writer of this article should be fired!!!
Unemployment Rate
Buffalo NY 14.8% One of the highest in the nation.
I would love to raise my family next to 3 mile island. Harrisburg is great!!!
Hey what about Detroit? You forgot about adding this city.
Another reader, apparently from or born in “Buffalo,” contradicted him:
Posted by Buffalo59 | 06/08/10 09:32 AM EDT
Unemployment Rate for Buffalo as of 4/2010 is 7.8%. Need to better research before stating negative facts.
Note that neither commenter provided a source for his numbers.
Well, I did some research, and it was the same-old, same-old. The job search Web site Just Hired, reports that through June 30, unemployment in the city of Buffalo is 15.8%. Assuming that “Buffalo59” wasn’t pulling numbers out of a hat, he was citing numbers for the metropolitan area, not the city.
But that 15.8% is actually an artificially deflated number. According to economist John Williams, of Shadowstats, previous administrations “reformed” the way they fudged unemployment numbers that both of its successors have maintained, e.g., by only counting people presently on unemployment as “unemployed,” and dropping anyone whose benefits have run out, who has given up looking for work, or is an involuntary part-timer. Thus, while the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the nation’s unemployment rate to have been 6.9% in December 2008 (Table 1, on page 7), using the 1980 methodology, Williams pegged the rate at the time at 17.5%. Today, while the official national unemployment rate is 9.5%, Williams maintains that the real rate is 22%.
(The fudging of economic indices is part of a long-term trend in the fudging of all social indices. This has been accomplished by sophistically shrinking the sample, for instance, by keeping the weakest students out of mental and educational testing, or by engaging in test fraud; police maintaining fraudulent crime statistics, and by officials manipulating the welfare rolls.)
If Williams is right, Buffalo’s real unemployment rate (without even counting the underemployment of people forced to work only part-time) is well over 30%.
Thirty percent unemployment, a black-Hispanic majority, an average income half the national and county norm, mass murders and “Don’t snitch”? Yeah, it sounds like a great city to raise a family in. That’s the ticket!
Update History
Updated at 12:08 a.m., on Monday, August 16, 2010.
Updated at 5:54 a.m., on Monday, August 16, 2010.
Updated at 7:26 a.m., on Monday, August 16, 2010.
Updated at 7:40 a.m., on Monday, August 16, 2010.
Updated at 2:15 a.m., on Tuesday, August 17, 2010.
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I can't tell you how many times I have seen reports of this kind of shooting in which those killed are innocent bystanders, which may be the case in this one. A week or so ago, a German tourist was shot and killed in San Francisco by "revelers from a party."
ReplyDeleteThe SFPD arrested a suspect, but the San Francisco DA declined to charge because of "lack of evidence."
David In TN