Long-time Baltimore night-shift worker James Lafond discusses the recent Saint Patrick’s Day mugging:
The criticisms of this crime victim range from: ‘being in the wrong place at the wrong time’; ‘deserving the Darwin award for being in that neighborhood’; and for ‘wandering into a black neighborhood’. These statements are not accurate. The attack happened at the Aquarium, the premier tourist attraction in Baltimore’s non-residential Inner Harbor. He was in no one’s neighborhood. So, even for those inclined to believe that any one wandering into a neighborhood inhabited by people of another race deserves to be beaten, robbed and humiliated, this man was not in any such clearly defined and sanctioned predation zone.
Numerous racially motivated pack attacks on white males and females have been perpetrated by black youths at the Inner Harbor and I have documented and even witnessed some of them. These, however, have been covered up by Law Enforcement, as the Mayor’s Office does not want bad publicity about the Inner Harbor keeping tourists away. I have interviewed business owners and crime victims who cannot even convince police officers to fill out reports for black-on-white violence. It is also a hard sell to the State’s Attorney to prosecute a black for a crime against a white in Baltimore. This has to do with the jury selection process.
For this reason I believe the Baltimore City Police Department has intentionally understaffed tourist locations to give the appearance of tranquility. Believe me, someone on the BPD decided not to have a presence at the Aquarium on Saint Patrick’s Day night. So, if you are a young black person and you want to experience the thrill of ganging up on a witless and fairly affluent white person, why would you go to South Baltimore and risk running into some hardcore White Trashian who has fist fights with his three toothless brothers for fun? Or why risk hunting in Canton where you might be stabbed by twenty Mexican construction workers? I would recommend you hunt soft out-of-town white bread while the City Cops enjoy the peep shows at the Big Top three blocks away.
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Make no mistake this was not a ‘black thing’. This was a ‘human thing’. The drunken tourist was attacked because he was socially isolated, not because he was white. Now, he was socially isolated because he was white. But this does not reflect hatred. It reflects the risk-limiting decision making of those who preyed upon him. In the video, at least one of the attackers called the white man a ‘n—–’ without a slanderous tone, and no one berated him for being white. They attacked him because they could.
One attacker said, ‘Yo, only in Boldimore yo!’ This reflects a common theme among black thrill attackers and gangsters in Baltimore; pride in the fearful reputation of their hometown. If you are from Baltimore and you venture outside of it via the highways or the internet your claim to fame is that you live where Homicide and The Wire were filmed. In this light the Saint Patrick’s Day Mugging begins looking like a ghetto version of a local Chamber of Commerce rally.