As news reports continued and national media attention over Sunday's Speed Street Riots expanded the blame game showed up in Charlotte this afternoon.
According to News Channel 14's Brad Borders some members of Charlotte City Council are accusing media outlets of reporting "misinformation" as fact. Borders goes on to say that News Channel 14 "stuck to the facts given by CMPD".
Meanwhile Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx says he'll have CMPD and CATS representatives on hand Thursday to clear up "misinformation" about Sunday's melee.
Council member Patrick Cannon suggested a strategy to prevent this sort of chaos from happening in the future, while fellow council member Warren Turner suggested even with a cop on every corner you can't foresee the actions of others.
The "Local Paper" Editorial Staff went all in on this story taking CMPD, Charlotte City Council and the Mayor to task with, an editiorial titled "Sunday's violence sends warning signal" which is here.
The most interesting thing to show up in the "Local Paper" is an open letter to Kojo Nantambu, President, Charlotte-Mecklenburg NAACP with the headline: "Shouting 'racism,' local NAACP is ineffective, maybe useless" written by Glenn Burkins which is here.
While the finger pointing and posturing continued among elected officials and the CMPD, readers of the Cedar Posts blog added varying accounts of what things were like uptown early Sunday morning.
"Police were trying to put up metal barricades to keep people back, but the crowd just pushed them over. People were yelling at cops 'Forget the police, y'all aren't gonna do anything! Y'all don't run this, we run this'. Gang signs being thrown up, and it looked like something out of a movie," said witness Alex Fernelius
An anoymous comment told of an intense walk down 4th and Trade Streets:
"I was Uptown working Speed Street late Saturday night as a volunteer.
Most of the crowd at speed street was very polite and orderly. Yes there were a few stupid drunks but nothing crazy like what was going on down along 4th street and along Trade.
Two black kids heckled me when I wouldn't give them any money. I have no idea what they were saying as they jumped up and down, skipping circles around me and my wife. They might have been 14 or 15 and were put up to it by older kids and adults. As soon as we got near the Police and the Lynx line they ran back and targeted another couple."
On the question of police in riot gear, someone posted this:
"Anon 8:19, police were not in riot gear. When CEU deploys (such as July 4th and News Years Eve) they wear their normal duty uniform. They also have a gas mask they carry in case gas needs to be set off (which is standard practice for them). At no time were gas masks put on. The actual riot gear which includes shields, knee pads, elbow pads, chest protectors, helmets, etc was NEVER put on by any of the police. The "assault" weapons the police were armed with were pepperball guns, which again, is standard when the CEU deploys.
To say the police were dressed out in riot gear and armed with assault weapons is uninformed and blatantly wrong. If you want to consider gas masks "dressed out in riot gear" then the only ones like that were CEU and that's is their standard practice. No other police officers even had that."
Cedar Posts is inclined to believe the posted comment as fact, in as much as it seems to come from someone with knowledge and lacks the spin of command staff.
One way to end the guess work is to "roll that beautiful bean footage" and let the public see unedited the video from 10PM on Saturday to 2AM Sunday. Turn is all over to Fox News or WBTV and let them air it. Just give them all the raw footage, no excuses, no BS.
Until CMPD hands over the footage this is what people are going to think.
1 comment:
Where is that footage...not going to come out unless they are forced to release it and the city council and mayor will lobby like crazy to keep that from happening.
To set the record straight the crowd was NOT from speed street. It was a bunch of thugs and thuggets wlaking around town and looking to cause nothing but trouble.
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