Posted on 02/20/2005 10:20:35 PM PST by deepFR
You're waiting for the justification.
You watch this videotape of the guy getting the snot beaten out of him in a pizza shop, and you're looking for some sign that maybe he deserved it, or at least did something -- anything -- that would suggest the beating made sense.
Strangely, you realize, you want there to be a reason the 6-foot-4, 320-pound man walked into the pizza shop at his girlfriend's behest and started wailing on a stranger.
That's a very strange thing, you realize -- to want a reason for this brutal act.
But the alternative is worse -- no reason at all.
And that's what it seems to come down to.
Last week, Mark Jones of Akron was found guilty of felonious assault and sentenced to four years in prison for pounding on Joseph Scarpino.
You know that meaningless cliche about ``senseless violence?'' This one sort of gives it meaning.
Look at the video. Scarpino was standing in line at DaVinci's Pizza in downtown Akron last July 31. It was 2:30 a.m. It was crowded. He was waiting for his order.
A woman, Prestina Sims, entered the shop and walked past the line to the counter.
Everyone understandsthat when there's a line, you take your turn. We don't like when this social contract gets broken.
Scarpino, who was on his cell phone with his fiancee, made some comment about this. Sims didn't like that, and unloaded verbally on Scarpino.
Despite her taunting, Scarpino held his tongue. A manager asked her to leave. She did -- and promptly returned with Jones.
She spit on the manager, then began screaming in Scarpino's face.
Most often in cases like this, there are two versions of the story and the truth lies somewhere in between. Not this time. Security camera footage eliminates that middle ground. It is not pretty.
Jones went straight for the face. His first punch appears to have nearly knocked out Scarpino. For the rest of the beating, Jones delivered half a dozen uppercuts to a doubled-over victim.
He broke Scarpino's nose, gave him a concussion, chipped a tooth and dropped him in a heap, where Jones tossed him around like a rag doll while looking for a dropped cell phone.
Scarpino's no small guy -- 6-foot-2, 220 pounds -- but Jones outweighed him by 100 pounds. Scarpino never got a punch in.
Maybe you'd feel better if there was justification. Sims' lawyer tried to create some. She said Scarpino, who is white, made a racial remark about Sims, who is black. But no witnesses -- and there were several -- confirmed this.
Jones tried, too. He said he believed Scarpino was going to hit the young lady. Yet Scarpino withstood Sims' verbal tirade without doing anything to escalate the confrontation.
Sims, in fact, made the first physical contact, repeatedly flicking Scarpino on the cheek before instructing Jones to ``take care of this white mother (expletive).''
So you're still waiting for the justification.
Because as ugly as all this is, there would be some degree of comfort in being able to say Scarpino deserved this.
But no matter how many times you replay the tape, it's just not there.
You've known the rules since you were old enough to understand. You get in line; you wait your turn. You get on the highway; you follow the rules. You sit in a movie theater; you keep quiet.
That's the social contract. You hardly notice when it's being followed, and you don't like when someone breaks it.
The beating of Joseph Scarpino is disturbing specifically because of the way it taunts that understanding. He got in line that night and followed the rules. Someone else broke them. And he got pummeled for it.
In civilized society, there are rules. One brutal violation proves their importance.
Sorry but the victim is the wrong color and the perpetrator isn't. Such is the state of our nation's laws.
You're asking the question from a defective premise. The premise being that anyone stopping the assailant from damned near killing the victim constitutes murder. Here's exactly what would have happened. A bystander sees the assailant hit him a second time (it would take that long to respond). The bystander pulls out a pistol (hopefully a BIG pistol) and orders the assailant to stop. The assailant, being a moron, charges the bystander and the bystander blows his head off. Clearly not murder. What some maggot prostitutor charges the bystander with is another story but the point is, the police got the authority to do exactly the same thing FROM YOU, THE CITIZEN, who delegated that authority in the first place. Think Principal and Agent.
Sounds like a hate crime to me. Oh excuse me, the victim is white. No hate crime here.
The assailant, being a moron, charges the bystander and the bystander blows his head off.
** That's self defense then and no I don't consider that murder. My question wasn't from a defective premise because you didn't say that in your original comment. You just said you'd blow someone's head off for beating up another person. I appreciate the clarification.
This was a hate crime right? And the punishment for a hate crime is only four years in jail? The article was well written. I wonder if in other coverage we can get an answer on this.
Of course it was racially motivated.
Considering my own ethnic background I hate to say this but, well...
Every time I've seen someone overreact to a slight to the point of violence and generally be loud AND disagreeable it's been a black person.
What I mean is, I've seen white people do the same, but it's been around other whites. But when blacks do this, it is ALWAYS a white or Asian or Latin person they are yelling at, and often they are displaying for all the non-blacks watching.
I saw it happen on the subway in Philly, my Korean-American ex-gf asked me about it unprovoked(she worked in fast food while going to school.)
Hell, my current gf was jogging here in Seattle and someone called her a "white faggot."
Basically, this is a pretty common pattern. It may be as much a function of class as ethnicity, though.
After the second punch a citizen would have been justified in shooting the assailant just to get him to stop beating on the guy. It wouldn't have required the bystander to be charged by the assailant. Imagine a scenario where the bystander is a 98lb woman with a .45 and the assailant ignores her order to stop killing the victim. Is the bystander supposed to let him kill the guy?
OK, here's how it goes where I am, and I'm not saying I would do this.
*IF* they were in TX, you can use deadly force to defend a third party against an assault under several circumstances I won't go into to keep the post shorter. Scarpino got the crap beat out of him by a bigger guy. People are killed and maimed like this - it's called blunt force trauma.
I don't know Ohio's laws, but if I lived there I would be finding out. Inserting oneself into somebody else's business is always risky, but sometimes you shouldn't just stand there.
And there are no fighting words. The ho can scream all she likes, and you can't cap her. Though she needs killin'
Sounds like a hate crime to me. Oh excuse me, the victim is white. No hate crime here.
Everyone knows that no matter what, the white guy was at fault because the other party was not white.
That is what I found really disturbing. I'm probably a third the size of that savage that beat the tar out of that poor s-o-b, but I would've at least tried to intervene somehow, like stepping in between them to try and distract the perp. I'm pretty agile, there's no way that savage would've caught me, even with a sucker punch. Those bystanders should be ashamed of themselves. Glad I don't live in Akron if that's the kind of support I can expect from my fellow citizen.
"A bystander blowing the assailant's head off would have been much cheaper in the long run."
Agreed. This is why I prefer object lessons.
Forget that link unless someone has a password and username to get in. That paper wants you signed up for every bit of junk mail there is just to view it. You sign up and your mailbox is going to be stuffed full of junk mail by morning.
Thanks for the UN and PW!
Sometimes it's more class than race. My mother was driving to work and this old white man starts yelling at her you effing niggers need to stop talking on the cellphone,etc. etc.etc. That would not be the first time my mother has been called nigger by a white person, or called a nigger and said she should be sent back to her country. She's never beat up anyone or gotten loud at all, and never called the police either. If that guy had said that to one of the bruthas around where I work, he would have gotten capped on the spot. That's how the low class responds to insults. And you can tell this gal is low class by how many MF's come out of her mouth. I, OTOH, have called the police on customers who have racially insulted me because they think because they're black they can get away with insulting non-blacks. I work alone and take racial epithets seriously. I've not been bothered in a long time.
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Those credentials didn't work for me - do they work for you?
If I saw three hundred pound man beating up a woman, I would have to shoot him. If he killed her, I couldn't live with myself. Other people may not do that because they worry about going to jail. Right where I live a man shoot two home invaders with an unlicensed gun and the two perps died and now he's in jail.
Sadly, that sentiment is all too true, and it's permeated our society at every imaginable level. I experience it frequently at my place of employment.
try one of these:
http://www.krd1.com/video/pizza_beating/pizza_beating.mov
http://www.krd1.com/video/pizza_beating/pizza_beating.mp4
http://www.krd1.com/video/pizza_beating/pizza_beating.rm
"Right where I live a man shoot two home invaders with an unlicensed gun and the two perps died and now he's in jail."
That's because prostitutors have nothing to gain (i.e., no face time on tv) from a dead, dime-a-dozen dirtbag. And it's because the American public are ignorant slobs for indicting him in the first place and convicting him in the second.
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