Blackout of Westport Quadruple Shooting Makes Media Just as Culpable in Crime
Day II
The shooting near Westport over the weekend was probably one of the most significant events in recent news but the local media is backing down from their coverage because the implications are down right scary.
Here are the facts the local media has reported on the subject so far:
At about 3 am on Sunday morning, officers were at 39th and Broadway directing traffic out of the area from the weekend Westport crowd when they heard 12 to 13 gun shots. One of the officers looked up and saw a man in his 20's falling near the Walgreen parking lot.Sadly, the story has all but disappeared from the headlines and WASN'T EVEN FEATURED IN THE STAR'S NEWSPAPER.
Another man in his 20's was walking toward the officer saying he had been shot. When officer checked on the man who had fallen, they discovered he had been shot in the head. Both men were transported to an area hospital for treatment of their injuries.
Why?
Here's my theory . . . Anyone familiar with Broadway after dark knows that it's most likely one of the most dangerous places in midtown Kansas City. Over the past few years, The Broadway Corridor has hosted countless instances of violence in addition to an upswing in (alleged) prostitution and (confirmed) drug dealing. Over the past few years, both the McDonald's parking lot and the area directly outside of Chubby's have hosted at least one murder and several large scale fights. The area near 39th street and Broadway is a hotbed of activity on weekend nights and while deadly shooting isn't commonplace; it wasn't exactly a surprise for folks in the vicinity either.
The danger comes from what I'll term: "The spill over." See, hipster white kids who are raised to think that they're invincible don't know that the danger in Kansas City is very real and it costs folks their lives every day. Sunday morning's shooting was a perfect example of an unsuspecting white kid catching a bullet for no other reason than the fact that the peril of KC's urban renaissance wasn't clearly spelled out for folks who don't realize the consequences of rampant gentrification or booming development on a large scale. Put simply, when different races and classes mix with alcohol and easily accessible guns . . . It's more than likely that people are going to end up dead.
And here's my speculation: The problems on Broadway mainly (statistically) come from the criminal class of the Black community who have laid claim to the territory for years and only now face a new set of interlopers with popular clubs and renewed crosstown traffic. Most likely, and I could be wrong (I'm not) the shooters were Black thugs that fired a gun into a crowd more than a dozen times. While this action doesn't reflect on either Black or white relations as a whole (I guess) the details of the case have been noticeably absent but the media interviews seem to reveal a random nature of the shooting. Therefore, supposing that it "just happened to be" a group of African-American thugs who shot into the crowd and killed some innocent white guy who just happened to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time still begs the question:
Doesn't that seem like a hate crime?
AND
If the situation was reversed and a group of white guys fired into a crowd of Black people . . . Would that merit more media attention?
Assuming the speculation I've laid out here is even halfway correct (it is) then the mainstream media silence regarding the details of this shooting is more than just lazy coverage . . . It's an act of complicity in order to keep people in Kansas City stupid.
And what if this kind of thing happens again? (It will) If someone else loses their life because of random gunfire into a crowd under similar circumstances - than the relative media silence over this story makes them an accomplice.
Again, the only point of this post is to lay on the table that there is the distinct possibility that there is a racial element to this quadruple shooting and murder of an innocent patron of a local hipster bar. Sadly, columnists like Steve Penn or Lewis Diuguid only see racial injustice when it's directed at Black people . . . But the subject of what could be a racially motivated killing makes complaints about stupid poems selling beer seem hopelessly frivolous.
And, until I'm proven wrong (I'm not) the story of a quadruple shooting in Midtown Kansas City seems to be an allegory about crime, the unspoken double standards concerning violence in Kansas City and the possibility that the spill over of violence affecting white club hoppers could put the development of this city at a true crossroads that reveals a racial divide far deeper than anyone ever imagined and the consequences of this don't just make for great cocktail conversation . . . The consequences of this situation leave innocent people dead on Kansas City streets.
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19 Comments:
I don't want to alarm you Tony, but this almost sounds like a "help whitey" post. I know you, much like myself hate the white devil and would enjoy nothing better to see the scourge of humanity washed down the drain like so much shit that they are...but you ALMOST sound sympathetic to the plight of stupid white people everywhere.
Tony, please quite writing coherent posts that make a point!
Good post, Tony. Glad to see you realize that racism goes both ways.
I wouldn't say it's blacked out per se -- the Star did have a small blurb, but it's definitely gotten way less media attention than the Ward Parkway shooting even though more (presumably) innocent people were hit.
Did the victim hit in the head live or die? Except for one report that said he was pronounced dead but then a heartbeat was found, no media reports I have seen have definitively said.
Tony, the presence of prostitution on Broadway is not alleged. It is fact. On several occasions, we have had hookers in our bar attempting to ply their trade.
As a bartender who works on Broadway, there is no question that most of the drug and gun related crime is coming from young black men. Whereas most of the drunken fights, unprofessional behavior, and general douchebaggery is committed almost 100% by whites.
While I'm not going to back your race-baiting, I do agree that the local media is complicit in this crime.
And I absolutely blame the police for this. How the hell can there be a shooting when there was a "police presence" at 39th and Broadway. Obviously, and I am speaking from daily experience, there is NO POLICE PRESENCE ON BROADWAY between 39th and 35th street. Oh sure, they drive up and down Broadway real fast on their way to and from Westport, but from where I stand, it is a FREE ZONE.
We stopped calling the police a year ago when zombies would smoke crack behind our building because they wouldn't even come. Not 30 minutes later, not an hour later, not 4 hours later... The police do not respond to 911 calls.
Drugs and prostitution on a major boulevard? Apparently not high on the priority list down at dispatching. They've got DUI checkpoints to man. I don't know what kind of genius it takes to understand that the zombies you have peeling off license plate stickers and breaking into cars one week is going to be buying or slinging crack the next and then mugging, stabbing, and shooting pedestrians and patrons (and god forbid, bartenders) for drug money the next.
The cops always bitch about how they don't have enough staff, equipments, jail space, etc. etc. to take care of the little shit. That's just complete bullshit. If they'd get the hell out of their cars, start patrolling the neighborhoods like we pay them to, and shut down the small fry hoppers slinging crack and stealing stickers, and getting those kids back in school and enforcing the curfews, then we wouldn't have shootings.
It starts on the streets and there ARE NO POLICE OFFICERS ON BROADWAY or the surrounding neighborhoods.
So, Tony, if mixing races and classes plus alcohol equals death, what's your proposed solution?
Perhaps we could segregate all poor / minority people into their own isolated projects and ghettos!
Oh, wait...
Good post, Tony.
I think the Star is scared of being labelled racist by giving this story the attention it deserves.
AMEN Brother Just Another Bartender ! ! !
The KC Star is failing it's community by playing politics. They should be denouncing crime on the front page of all of their papers.
Scooter - the man shot in the head did not live. He was my nephew. He did not die at the scene, but was declared Sunday night at the hospital. He was in the area looking for a friend that was out...and he walked out of the Walgreen's into the shooting...he was yelling to people to get on the ground and pushed his friend down so that he wouldn't get shot...and some spineless coward shot him in the back of the head.
Expect the star to run the story now that they've been called out and the kid died.
The newspapers and TV stations that are in bed with the Westport lobby under report the usual, clockwork-like, early summer drivebys. The only difference this time was nobody in town jumped on it.
The 'roaming bands of black people in westport will kill you' story usually comes around mid-summer when the heat starts to overtake the desire to hit on painted skanks in tube tops.
Yawn.
If the local media *had* jumped all over it, Tony would be throwing a fit that they only report shootings that hurt white people.
All I know is my little white trash, devil, scourge of humanity, douchebag ass isn't gonna be chatting it up with the late night freaks at that intersection any longer, although my preferred adjective for my race would be goddamn Satanic mo'fuckers. Hoorah for racism and bloodshed! kill us off my man - but you gotta ways to go!
All of this seems to be on point and you have received some very informative comments Tony.
The only thing I would like to add is that the Black community is against these criminals as well. I am familiar with the Broadway area and I mostly agree with your characterizations. But it's also of the utmost importance to realize that these problems affect the Black community even harder and all of this city stands to benefit if police get these kind of killers off the street. But they need help from the public in order to do it.
To Anonymous at 12:11 pm:
I'm guessing the Star will NOT pick this story up and leave it as a tiny blurb to be missed by most folks. Perhaps if this tragedy had occured near the Sprint Center...
As far as the Star goes, they cater under the guise of race relations, to hide the race identity of suspects. They give woefully poor descriptions of the suspect when they would be useful to disseminate to the public for capture of the suspect. Why you ask? The Black Community leaders (Reverends of The This That and The Other) have bitched about "the racist connotation" of saying it was a black male who did such-in-such crime. Perhaps something non-race specific (non-description)The Star editors, mainly white males at the time, caved to such race politics rather than reporting with integrity and made it standard practice from the City Desk and higher to be vague on that.....race thing. I can only assume the others followed or where race “guilted” into the same editorial rules. Read some old papers in the library, late 70s or earlier. You will see a difference.
Oh yeah from above. 23 months Star free as far as it being tossed/paid for. The New Media will rise. F*ck The Star, it's new small print, it's poor reporting/editorial staff,the new smaller layout.
Wow YOU PEOPLE ARE OFF THE WALL. Tell me, how is this an act of racism of the crowd the gunmen were shooting into was mostly black? It's obvious you people don't know what you are talking about because the shooting happened ACROSS THE STREET from the mostly white Westport area where mostly blacks congregate because most of them are UNDERAGE and are NOT ALLOWED in the Westport corridor. SO TONY YOU JUST WASTED YOUR TIME writing a long blog post about a SUPPOSED SITUATION that really, truly doesn't make any kind of sense! Blacks shooting at white people? Please, WHITE PEOPLE SHOOT WHITE PEOPLE (Ward Pkwy mall) and black people shoot black people (every damn day).
Now that, my dear JoCo residents, is the truth.
Tony has some good points.
However, this idea that the media would bury a story like this for any reason is way too conspiracy theory to me. I work in the media, and I know that what it takes for a story to get coverage is PEOPLE. People who are willing to talk to a reporter or a camera. We wanted to do a story about the kid who died yesterday, and NO ONE would talk to us. So it got a 20 second blurb on the news instead of a lengthy in-depth story it could have gotten. There's no conspiracy... if people don't talk... there's no story... period.
Hey mr "whites kill whites, blacks kill blacks" are you kidding me??? you are ignorant, and obviously do not hang out in any west port or down town night life areas. last time i checked, thats 2 innocent sweet young white girls gunned down by young black wannabe thugs. i'll be shootin back. i recomend you all do the same.
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