Girls Get Off to White Boys Beat by Black
4 Black Suspects Charged in Videotaped Beating of White Teenager in Chicago
CHICAGO — A white teenager cowers in a corner, his hands bound with orange cords and his mouth covered with tape. Four African-Americans kick and hit him and slash at his scalp. As a cellphone camera captures their blurry images and broadcasts the ordeal on Facebook, the attackers hurl racial insults and denounce President-elect Donald J. Trump.
On Thursday, as a groundswell of online outrage over the beating laid bare racial tensions ahead of the presidential transition, four people who the police said had participated in the assault were charged with hate crimes.
The police said the victim, an 18-year-old from the suburbs with mental disabilities, spent hours tied up and terrified on Chicago's West Side before officers found him wandering the streets in a daze.
"They admit that they were beating him, kicking him," Cmdr. Kevin Duffin of the Chicago Police said of the four defendants. "They made him drink toilet water."
Police officials said the victim knew one of the suspects, several of whom seemed intoxicated.
While it was one instance of violence in a city where young people are killed almost every day, the attack, particularly on social media and conservative news outlets, turned into a test of how the country views race.
It also seemed to tap into the very issues that have grown the rawest around the nation of late: a divisive political climate, a painful racial split and an increasingly fierce and polarized social media universe.
"If this had been done to an African-American by four whites, every liberal in the country would be outraged, and there would be no question it is a hate crime," Newt Gingrich, a Republican and former speaker of the House, said on "Fox and Friends."
A hashtag linking the assault to the Black Lives Matter movement exploded on social media, prompting a leader of the movement, DeRay Mckesson, to respond on Twitter, "It goes without saying that the actions being branded by the far-right as the 'BLM Kidnapping' have nothing to do w/ the movement."
Pat Brady, a former chairman of the Illinois Republican Party and a former prosecutor, said the attack should not be viewed as having some larger meaning.
"To be fair, we can acknowledge that we've had some really bad political discourse in this election, but this is about four sick kids who probably can't even spell Trump let alone know anything about the election," Mr. Brady said.
The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson said he had been urgently trying to reach the victim's family. "We want to do whatever we can do to help, to show our love for the child," he said.
Of the attack itself, he said, "This is an ethical collapse, not an ethnic affirmation."
In Washington, the White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, said the beating demonstrated "a level of depravity that is an outrage to a lot of Americans."
Police officials said they had sought the hate crime charges because of comments about the victim's race and diminished mental capacity. Commander Duffin said the police did not know whether the victim had voted in November, or whether that had influenced the attack. But the invocation of Mr. Trump's name, and the simmering racial tensions after a contentious election season, convinced many on social media that it was an act of racial hatred with political overtones.
In Chicago, city officials and black leaders condemned the attack and offered support to the victim.
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Mayor Rahm Emanuel called the assault "sickening," adding, "There is more to our city than that."
The police superintendent, Eddie Johnson, called the beating "deplorable" and praised the officers who spotted the victim walking on the street and called for an ambulance.
Shari Runner, the president of the Chicago Urban League, described what had played out on social media as disturbing on several levels — the deeply troubling acts themselves, presented live with seeming indifference, followed by suggestions that Black Lives Matter was responsible.
People of all races, Ms. Runner said, had been "very outraged here in Chicago that anybody would do these things."
The victim, who has not been identified by the Chicago police, had been reported missing days earlier by his parents. The police said he had met up with Jordan Hill, whom he considered a friend, at a suburban McDonald's on New Year's Eve. Mr. Hill, 18, from nearby Carpentersville, Ill., stole a vehicle, the police said, drove to the West Side with the victim and had been visiting friends for a couple of days before the beating.
But what started as a playful fight on Tuesday between the victim and Mr. Hill, the police said, escalated into an hourslong beating.
Mr. Hill was charged along with three Chicago residents: Tesfaye Cooper, 18; Brittany Covington, 18; and Tanishia Covington, 24. All four were accused of aggravated kidnapping, hate crimes, aggravated unlawful restraint and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon; they were scheduled to appear in bond court here on Friday.
Mr. Hill was also charged with robbery, possession of a stolen motor vehicle and residential burglary. Mr. Cooper and Brittany Covington were also charged with residential burglary.
A roughly 30-minute video clip shared widely online appeared to show a Facebook livestream of the assault. A group can be seen taunting and physically assaulting a man amid cursing and laughing. Much of the video focuses on one woman as she rambles, at times incoherently. The women, police officials said, were both smoking what they described as marijuana.
The video begins with a shot of one woman before turning to the victim, who is seated in the corner of a room with his mouth covered. The woman laughs as two men cut the sleeve of the victim's shirt. One of the men yells epithets about Mr. Trump and "white people." Later, a man is seen cutting a patch of hair from the victim's head, appearing to draw blood in the process.
Officers found the victim wandering bloodied and in distress with Mr. Hill on Tuesday in a dangerous part of the West Side. The police were eventually able to link the victim to a nearby report of a battery. The victim was treated at a hospital and had been released by Wednesday night.
In a Chicago suburb, a brother-in-law of the victim, who identified himself as David, briefly addressed reporters late Thursday. He expressed gratitude for an outpouring of support. "We're happy that everyone's concerned," he said. "This should never have happened."
The beating in the video comes at a time of increased violence in Chicago. The city had 762 homicides in 2016, the most since the 1990s, a grim milestone that drew the attention of Mr. Trump this week.
At the Rev. Marshall Hatch's church, not far from where the victim was found, ministers met after getting calls from concerned residents, many of whom said they wanted to help raise money for the victim.
"People don't want this to be the face of our neighborhood," Mr. Hatch said. "And more than that, they have a very genuine concern about the victim."
Of suggestions that a black victim in such an attack might draw more outrage and concern, Mr. Hatch said that he had not sensed a racial dimension to the response in his mostly black neighborhood.
"Nobody is making excuses for the behavior of these young people," he said. "People really just feel for this victim."
Girls Get Off to White Boys Beat by Black
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/05/us/chicago-racially-charged-attack-video.html