Do you recognize this man?
Charlottesville’s Marc Adams and his girlfriend, Jeanne Doucette, were seriously injured by this guy and two others on the Downtown Mall last week, Courteney Stuart writes in C-Ville Weekly. The two were walking downtown at 1 AM, after he finished his shift at work, when a group of four people—all African-American—approached the couple, and the three men set upon the couple with apparent glee. Adams was left unconscious with a concussion, amnesia, a broken ankle, a black eye, a missing tooth, and cracked ribs, while Doucette has bruises on her head and torn cartilage in her ear. While the three men attacked, a female friend looked on. The assault ended when passersby called 911 and Doucette starting taking pictures with her phone, including the above this photo of the female friend (and others, in the C-Ville Weekly article):
Adams wrote about the incident on Facebook immediately thereafter, but otherwise the Charlottesville Police raised no warnings and didn’t circulate the photos, leading the victims to post the photos to Facebook today, in an effort to warn others and to catch the attackers. Despite Adams’ immediate suggestion to the police that video from Wells Fargo’s security cameras would be helpful, it took a week before they requested that video, on Friday, and they haven’t gotten it yet. Department spokesman Ronnie Roberts says that they kept it quiet to avoid letting the attackers know that they were being sought by police.
This story is truly disturbing. The fact that:
a) these men appear to have had no other agenda than to merrily dispense a vicious, arbitrary beating;
b) that the woman’s phone was not confiscated/destroyed when she apparently was photographing them with their full knowledge during the beatings;
c) that it happened right ON the mall and there were apparently NO other witnesses (even at 1 a.m.) that could have conceivably been of some help (in some way).
and d) that the police response has been so little and so late — that’s VERY disappointing.
I sincerely hope that they catch these three and they are punished severely.
So for the male suspects, it’s a possible case of “aggravated malicious wounding” (§ 18.2-51.2) If this was a “knockout game” that would seem to meet the code requirement for “disable” or else the injuries could be deemed “severe,” and in any case the continuing assault once the first victim was down can be shown to indicate malice).
For the women, perhaps “assault or battery by mob” (§ 18.2-42).
The Downtown area needs cameras and security personnel. For the former, there’s nothing holding those who own private property and those holding leases from setting up their camera network and paying for monitoring, if only to generate evidence to help in criminal prosecutions (or civil actions) that might eventually stabilize the sense of law and order. For the the latter, it would be interesting to explore the legality of how private security personnel might be used.
I looked over on the Newsplex, and now the police department appears to be saying that they screwed up, internally, in terms of assigning an investigator to the case following the initial report. They didn’t assign an investigator until the woman came back in, like 8 days later, to offer more information about the assault, and that’s when they discovered it hadn’t been assigned yet. Whoops.
I am very sorry for the victims and think the Police screwed up this time. I do think Chief Longo is aware of the dangers of the Mall and has tried to provide better security. Without the support of our City Council that wouldn’t happen. We elected these people and if we do not let them know that we support Longo’s request then we also share the blame for continuing attacks in this area.
“Recently the Charlottesville City Council turned down Police Chief Timothy J. Longo’s proposal to increase safety around the Downtown Mall. His proposal included the addition of kiosks, security cameras, and increased patrol. ”
http://thevirginiaadvocate.com/…/safety-at-the…/
Safety at the Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall
thevirginiaadvocate.com
Here is the correct link to the above article:
http://thevirginiaadvocate.com/2012/04/12/safety-at-the-charlottesvilles-downtown-mall/
They are to busy building subsidize SRO’s which curiously enough were shortly followed by significant increase in traffic corner panhandling. The downtown mall is nothing more than a tax base for them to spend money.
Saftey, economic devleopment… it all means nothing to them as long as they can piss away 500K for susidized low income house. http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/city-council-extends-lease-for-leap/article_d591d39c-66cd-11e3-bdcb-0019bb30f31a.html
According to the survey mentioned in the article – spending on safety is the communities second priority .
” Interestingly enough, a survey is conducted every year by the city which allows residents to rank different services that the city can provide in order to plan for the city’s annual budget. School is ranked as top priority overall, however, safety follows as second in the city of Charlottesville. Even at second rank, other services that rank below safety were still able to receive funding. “
Valuable reporting by Courtney Stuart here. I’d wager this story never makes it out to the wider audience without the initial story.
1) Without getting into it, I humbly posit that there is a possibility that this attack wasn’t as ‘random’ as it is being reported. I have no idea, empirically, either way, but questions are being asked by people who know.
2) Random or not, the police dropped the ball and violence is unacceptable.
3) Isn’t the downtown mall completely covered in cameras already? I seem to remember people complaining about that a couple years back.
4) “Valuable reporting by Courtney Stuart here. I’d wager this story never makes it out to the wider audience…”
Well it certainly is making the rounds in the ultra right wing and white power communities as grist for a racist agenda. (the following links are offensive):
http://prowhiteparty.wordpress.com/2013/12/31/a-violent-black-on-white-attack-in-virginia/comment-page-1/#comment-24
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t1014597/
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3106827/posts?page=9
There are so many more, but that should give you a flavor.
THe police wanted CCTV cameras on the mall with video feed to central office. Betting this might have been caught, especially at central place, much faster and sorted. Stop me if wrong, but you can be photographed without consent in a public area. But yes, people did get their panties in a wad.
Apparently the guy in the pic has been picked up by the police and is under further investigation and has been fired from his position on the mall.
More to the story? http://charlottesvilledtm.com/2014/01/05/viral-justice-chief-longo-on-the-alleged-knock-out-game-assault-on-the-dtm/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+cvilleblogs+%28Charlottesville+Blogs%29
So much for following social media too gather info…
Yep, danpri. I was disturbed to find the C-Ville story jump so quickly to “knock out game!” You can just read through the initial comments even on this site to see how readers felt authorized, in a way, by the C-Ville writer’s implicit conjecture, to go on and fill in the unknown areas of this incident with stereotypes.
[…] two men turned themselves in for assaulting two people downtown last month, Dave McNair (formally of The Hook) writes on The DTM that a more complicated narrative is […]
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