I don’t know Dante Beattie, but he’s my kind of guy. This year, knuckleheads once again chose to act-a-fool after the uptown fireworks display. Fights broke out, police in riot gear controlled the crowd and at least one person was shot on North Tryon, according to an Observer story.
Still, Beattie told an Observer reporter that he’d return next year to see fireworks uptown.
Beattie took his daughters to the show and said it was “probably the best I’ve seen so far n this region.”
People like Beattie are the reason the city, sponsors and uptown leaders must not let knuckleheads prevent them from scheduling outdoor events in the center city. We can’t allow a bunch of punks to make us afraid to book large outdoor events uptown, or make law-abiding citizens afraid to go uptown.
Where did you watch the fireworks display this year? How was it?
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Violence and fireworks uptown
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14 comments:
Next year will be the last year for this event unless Charlotte grows to understand what holding an event like this in a "world class city" really means. Judging by the dropoff in this year's crowd it will only be Beattie and the rioters next year anyway.
When large crowds of unruly people are expected, we need to look at how Washington DC and NYC handle these situations. Since Charlotte wannabees try to emulate the big city anyway they can, why not follow their lead on crowd control?
Whenever there are WTO or World Bank protests in those cities, the riot police not only show up, they actually prevent the riot.
For example, the NYPD corralled hundreds of potental rioters in a park last time there was this type of potential situation. No riot had taken place, but the people refused to disperse as ordered. They were ALL sited.
Another tactic is to march the riot control line right up to the protesters, then have extra police jerk the worst trouble makers onto their side of the police line. This separates the ring leaders from the rest of the crowd.
Yes, these tactics are forceful. Yes, they will cause the ACLU and their friends heartburn. Yes, they work.
The CMPD and our local Govco just has to show the will to actually prevent crime, not just wring their hands about it afterwards.
Couln't have said it better. We need some skull crushing cops out there. Nobody is going to complain if the perps deserved it.
Sounds like Charlotte's African American community is just as sick of it as anyone else.
You and your man Beattie must be complete idiots. You must know how the saying goes "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me" It looks like the thugs are going to shoot people and cause trouble no matter what. You and Beattie are both ready to sign up for a third round. Why?
I think they are signing for a 3rd because we all have to. You can't hand the streets over to trouble makers. If we give up what's next ?
Besides, the trouble makers are coming from outside uptown. North, West, East. Why not shut down the transit out of uptown at 10pm on event nights? Maybe even shut it down at midnight on every weekend ?
Last ride home.
They may think twice about even showing up to cause trouble if they can't get home.
Things like this do happen in other places - the difference between other places and here are that people aren't afraid. This just gives all the wussies in this city another excuse not to go downtown because it's "scary." PARTY at Stonecrest! Woohoo!
Charlotte is lame.
To be clear, I'm not advocating a police state or skull crushing cops.
I'm just asking them to do what needs to be done when a large crowd - white or black - gets unruly.
Also, to the last anon, shutting down the transit system contributed to last year's riot in a small way. CATS was idiotically running on a holiday schedule so there were few busses that night to take the people home who had ridden the bus into uptown early that day. If anything many more busses should be available on event nights to get people out of town ASAP. That's onother little tidbit we could learn from the "big cities". Try riding the DC Metro after a Wizards or Capitals game. A train comes every minute to get the people out of there.
Loitering because the buses are not available only leads to trouble.
This year's fracas sounds like it was deliberate and planned to a certain extent.
Tonya calls the perpetraitors "punks". Everybody else calls them black kids.
Rather than asking "how were the fireworks," we need to ask "why" is this thuggery happening? Scholars have probed issues of poverty and racism for years, yet the solutions have failed to yield appreciable results for certain groups. Who is to be held accountable? It's easy to blame the schools, institutional racism (which does exist, but is not necessarily to barrier that some make it out to be) or poverty.
The following link is, in my opinion, an interesting discussion sparked by Orlando Patterson's article titled "A Poverty of the Mind."
http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Mail/xmcamail.2006_04.dir/0017.html
As a Black Man I'll be the first to say some of the kids in my community are out of control,but please don't use their behavior as a guage of most of the kids in my community.
If the poster above got a problem with Black people in general then he needs to get over himself and accept the fact we ain't going anywhere anytime soon.
Now let's talk about out of control White Kids,you know the ones driving drunk down 485 the wrong way,are they to be used as a example of all white kids?
I don't think so,so for the resident bigoits who seem to troll here to spread their hate get a life!
I was disappointed in this year's fireworks. Last year it felt like a community event to attend and be part of something. This year it felt like mass chaos of people just driving wherever they could find a parking spot and a piece of pavement or grass to plop on. The traffic jam getting out of the area was crazy! The melee didn't affect me either year, but I hate that a fun community event was ruined and there was no less crime this year than last year. I think next year I'll look for something else to do.
In Atlanta the perps/punks/black kids would be called victims of the white man. I'm glad that the people of Charlotte got that angry that fast over this and that Atlanta's in my rear-view mirror.
What was most disturbing was to see the all of those photos and videos of the kids laughing, having a wonderful time even when gun shots we're fired. I guess it's a "black thing" we white people can't understand. I don't hate black people, i just don't understand them. It's beyond frustrating.
Lowes Motor Speedway handles 300,000 very drunk patrons per race with little to no problems. Whatever they do up at the track to keep things flowing needs to be mimicked during large events in uptown. I so totally am against white or black thugs ruining a good thing for our city.
Shut down the entire transit system the entire day on July 4 and see what happens uptown then. If the thugs can't get a ride uptown then they won't be there to cause trouble. I grew up here in Charlotte and fireworks uptown used to be fun to go to and there was no trouble whatsoever. What happened? Unmarried black women kept getting pregnant and having babies out of wedlock with no fathers around to teach them authority and respect. So now we have a bunch of teenaged punks without fathers who will surely go into a life of crime if this absurdity is not stopped.
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