The Mobile Press-Register had just about a perfect news story
today with the latest on the Matthew Owens beating case about which
I have written many times at this site, and which continues to earn
national attention. Please read Brendan Kirby’s
balanced, comprehensive new report right here. The police
chief, Micheal Williams,
disputed key elements of the narrative offered by Owens’ sister
and other witnesses interviewed by the Press-Register. Contrary to
reports that it was a mob-beating, the chief said investigators
could only confirm that one person — Terry
Rawls — actually assaulted the victim. And Williams said
Owens’ wounds and other physical evidence do not support reports
that a host of objects, from law furniture to a paint can, were
used in the attack.
This is truly bizarre. Pictures taken of Owens in the hospital
cleary and unambiguously show a light-blue paint-like material on
his face, especially under his left nostril, very prominently — a
color that happens to match, exactly, what shows up on TV news
footage of a paint can featuring the exact same color at the scene.
Likewise, TV footage shows a broken chair with a very large amount
of very red liquid dried all over it; if that liquid isn’t blood,
and if that chair just happened to be sitting on that porch even
though the chair was badly busted, without having had any role in
the beating, then I’m a Plutonian and the moon is a great big key
lime pie.
Then there is the chief saying they probably will decline to
charge not only everybody else on the scene who was in the yard
and, in at least some cases, urging on the attackers, but that he
may not even arrest the two other people he described as being “in
close proximity” to the assault.
As Kirby’s story rightly notes,
Alabama would appear to give police some options to charge
others, depending on the facts. For instance, anyone who
voluntarily contributes to a crime — even if he was not present for
the incident — could be charged as an accessory. Another statute
makes it illegal to incite a riot. The law defines that as anyone
who “solicits, incites, or urges another person to engage in
tumultuous and violent conduct“ that is likely to caused a grave
risk of public terror.
At least the police chief now acknowledges what other police
spokesmen spent weeks categorically denying, namely that there was
indeed racial tension and there were racial epithets, reportedly
from both sides, during the incident. Put into proper perspective
— an ongoing dispute between two men, ongoing neighborhood
tensions that seem to have been only partially race-related, a lone
apparent reference to Trayvon Martin (any idiot observer/peripheral
participant among the crowd of 20 could say that and not have it be
the main cause of the attack), and other context provided by
multiple news reports — the attack can be assessed by the public
in full context and adjudged accordingly. But when officials deny
the obvious, which was that race played at
least some role in the attack, then the
credibility of the whole investigation is badly undermined, and
racial tension actually rises because people resent seeing things
swept under the rug. The path to healing is truth, not a false
paint job over the facts, and it certainly should not involve
denying that the paint itself is even there when it is in reality
in plain view.
What sticks in the craw is a consistent double standard, evident
also in the Norfolk beating case
http://bearingdrift.com/2012/05/03/virginian-pilot-defends-non-reporting-of-norfolk-beating/ ,
in which crimes of a certain sort by one race are excused, papered
over, not reported, played down, etcetera, while crimes of similar
sorts by another race are hyped mercilessly; especially when the
racial aspects of the first are denied and when the latter may not
even have had any racial aspects but the race angle is nationally
hyped by people with a history of inciting violence, but who the
national media treat as heroes.
When the Obama/Holder Justice Department stands reliably
accused, without a single specific denial from the Holder DoJ, of
adopting a policy of not enforcing civil rights laws when the
victims are white and the perpetrators black http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jul/15/racialist-justice/,
then it is understandable why so many people want to make a
national issue of the double standard when a case that is obviously
at least partially race-based, like the Owens beating, attracts not
a peep from DoJ.
This is important. Justice should be color blind. Otherwise,
racial backlash begets racial backlash, and the cycle of racial
tension might be never-ending.
