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Boston Police: No evidence of gang involvement in Carson Beach gathering
By adamg on Wed, 06/01/2011 - 8:19am
WBUR follows up on Monday's whatever-it-was, talks to kids who used Facebook to get their friends to show up at the beach just to hang out, and Boston Police, who said there was no indication of a "gang issue" Monday.
State Police told the station that at least some of the fights were a result of gang rivalries, but even they acknowledged that the vast majority of the people there had nothing to do with gangs.
The Globe reports Mayor Menino's gotten involved, asking State Police to "act more like Boston police" in dealing with disturbances.
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Comments
Move on folks nothing to see
Move on folks nothing to see here! Enabling always works so well. I'm sure when a flash mob of youths decides to descend on the Prudential, Copley,Cambridgeside malls, or even Newbury Street for some mayhem, it'll just be another misunderstanding.
Flash mobs are generally white people
Yeah, it makes a difference. Only Stephen Colbert gets to live in a colorblind world.
Enabling? BPD has shown they can crack down just as hard as any other police force (remember Victoria Snelgrove, killed with a "non fatal" beanbag gun?). But they also can recognize the difference between lots of kids gathering around fistfights on a hot day at the beach and OMG TEH GANGZ!
What part of my comment
What part of my comment contained a statement on race?
I have a serious problem with the thug culture and mentality which is condoned or ignored by city officials at every turn.
A thug is a thug no matter what color they are or what neighborhood they are from.
Theoretical crackdown on flash mobs
I wasn't saying you did bring up race. I did that all by myself.
But you also brought up police "enabling" of thugs, when even the police themselves now say the vast majority of kids there were just beach goers like everybody else (imagine that). Rather than going after the troublemakers, they shut down the beach (and Little League games across Day Blvd. at Moakley Park) and swept everybody down the street.
And I just find it hard to picture police doing something similar with a bunch of white kids smacking each other with pillows (an incident at the Jefferson Memorial does give me pause, though).
You didn't mention race but
You didn't mention race but you did equate the response to the Carson Beach fisticuffs to flashmobs. Frankly you're comment is a bit confused so I'm not sure if you're suggesting that the police should or should not crack down aggressively on flash mobs.
Adams' point is a good one that the people who take part in flash mobs tend to be white, educated, and middle class or better. The kids who "invaded" Carson Beach tended to be less white, and less well off than the flash mob crowd. White people (who make up the majority of the audience for the media outlets who reported the "gang fight" storyline) tend to get a lot more nervous about rowdiness from people of color than they do about such activity from white people. We can see this in the "gang fight" story itself. The, largely white, news media, reporting to a, largely white, audience, made out like some fistfights among a crowd of young non white people had to be gang activity.
Compare this to the recent zombie march, made up mostly of white people, where, aside from one bit of fuddy duddy hood, from a columnist at the Boston Business Journal, was treated mostly as a funny show. Granted, there were, to my knowledge, no fistfights at the zombie march, but somehow I suspect that if this had been several hundred black kids marching through dowtown Boston people would think the world was coming to an end.
As upsetting as the fights at
As upsetting as the fights at Carson Beach were, the fact that you people take part in flash mobs and zombie walks is even more disturbing. And the fact that the previous poster appears to have compiled statistical data on the flash mobbers is equally strange.
I love slopes and how
I love slopes and how slippery they can get.
Act more like Boston
Act more like Boston police?!? Why, because they've done such a great job curbing the gangs?
My husband was beaten bloody as part of a gang initiation and you know what the police did? Nothing. They didn't take a description, no mug shots were shown - they never even went to the scene of the crime. And I know that because they argued with me about where the crime took place - and when I told them the blood stains were right on the sidewalk if they didn't believe me, they told me that was impossible.
So when I hear that the State Police should act more like BPD, does that mean they should just let the gangbangers run amok?
But yesterday Drudge said
But yesterday Drudge said there was a race war going on?!? I don't know who to believe anymore!!!!!
\\sarcasm
Drudge links to Newsmax,
Drudge links to Newsmax, Infowars, and Prison planet as 'news sites'. Your mileage on factually based information through his headline portal will vary.
Newsmax . . .
. . . LOL. The best on Newsmax is Joe Farah and his "G2 Intelligence Report". Pure fantasy concocted out of thin air. Ooooh- Iran is inventing a doomsday machine- says Joe Farah's "sources" in the "intel community"! Take a trip down those archives for a good laugh at what they have "reported" over the years. Talk about inventing "news" to fit a narrative? Newsmax invented it.
So its OK for these kids to
So its OK for these kids to en mass disturb people's beach activity over the course of FOUR days? Whether they are gangs or not is irrelevant. If they were fighting inside a Whole Foods you guys would be up in arms! The cops cant win with you people. If they don't react, you guys call them inept and lazy. If they do react they are being heavy handed. Bunch of hypocrites.
No one is criticizing the
No one is criticizing the cops for breaking up fights. In fact I don't think anyone here has criticized the cops at all. The criticism is directed at the media which treated this like it was some kind of gang war rather than just an overcrowded day at the beach where some fights erupted.
red line madness
adam you were right kids being kids exploded in chaos. I would love to hear an explanation on who may the decision to force families to march up to JFK station with the troublemakers. If they thought it was a public safety crisis , how do they explain putting Cyrus and the rest of the warriors on the red line