Posted on 09/05/2001 12:57:30 AM PDT by L.N. Smithee
Yep!
I don't think so. I think he was probably beating them,but the Klan didn't know about that or they WOULD have horsewhipped him. What they did know (the local grocer was a Kluxer) was that the old man wasn't buying the amount and types of food he should have been buying to feed two little girls,and that he had not been sending them to school. What you need to keep in mind is that the Klan at that time was a secret government,and in many cases the ONLY source of protection poor people had. The local sheriff's and judges didn't give a damn about anybody but prominent property owners and businessmen. The Klan stepped in and put both girls with the old man because they could help each other. When the old man failed in his responsibility,they stepped in to straighten him up.
The KKK was a SERIOUS political power in the early 1920's. They even held marches on DC that scared the hell out of both the Republicans AND the Dim-o-crats. They weren't the low-IQ cretins that compromise the modern Klan.
How can I not agree when I am the one who stated this took place around 1918-1920?
>l >l >l
This is easily one of the most racist posts to appear on FR in weeks.
Why don't you just tell L.N. Smithee that he's acting "mighty uppity"?
Woman denies recanting assault story
Authorities prepare to file charges of making false statements
By SAMMY ALLEN of the Gazette Staff
LINDEN, Texas--Cass County authorities are preparing to file charges against a black woman they believe fabricated a story of a racial attack by two white men wearing pillow cases over their heads.
"There will be warrants issued for her in the next few days for giving false statements to a police officer and fabricating physical evidence," Chief Deputy Ronnie Fincher said.
Meanwhile, the 32-year-old woman has reportedly gone public to deny that she recanted her story. She was not available for comment Wednesday.
Anthony Bond, founder of the Irving, Texas, branch of the NAACP, said the woman and her family went on Dallas radio station KHVN Tuesday to say authorities were putting words in her mouth.
"About 3 p.m. Tuesday, these investigators took her away from her home and questioned her. She didn't have a lawyer present and none of her family was present," Bond told the Gazette Wednesday.
Cass County District Attorney Randal Lee said it is unusual for a lawyer and family members to be present when a victim is being questioned.
"Obviously they don't need a lawyer if she is not a suspect," Lee said.
The woman's brother, who was not identified, said his sister's claims should be fully investigated before conclusions are drawn.
"There is no doubt in my mind that something happened to her and someone injured her," the brother said Wednesday.
Cass County authorities maintain the confession was not forced.
"We have a written, signed statement from her," Fincher said Wednesday.
"She told the deputy she was going home to tell her mother the truth and if any news media called she would tell them the truth. We've got her statement here."
An investigator from the sheriff's office and an FBI agent also received a statement from a white male who was possibly involved in an affair with the woman. The investigation has revealed that instead of being held overnight by Ku Klux Klansmen, the woman was at the man's home.
"We have a statement from the gentleman she spent the night with. He stated he will be glad to take a polygraph," Fincher said.
The man reportedly has a restraining order against the woman and her family. On the night of the alleged incident, the woman's mother and children went to the man's house looking for her and he would not let them in.
However, the next day he reportedly took her to the house of a relative, who then took her home.
Lee said the allegations made by the woman were taken seriously. According to Lee, Cass County has been the scene of some very sensitive racial issues. In one recent case, the body of a black man was found hanging from a tree. Although the death was ruled a suicide, many people still believe he was murdered.
Lee also noted that in years past, there have been rumors of Klan activity in the southern part of Cass County where the recent alleged attack was reported.
"There was a restaurant they called the Kildare Kozy Kitchen, and all the Ks on the sign out front were very prominent and maybe in different colors," Lee said. "It was known that blacks were not allowed there. It's been closed down for several years.
"She picked a good area to do this," Lee said of last week's incident. "It gets people stirred up and it builds resentment. It gives people a sense of fear.
"We've heard that people in the area where she lived wouldn't let their kids out of the house over the Labor Day weekend because they were afraid. It's a sad situation."
Fabricating physical evidence
Felony
10 years
I can't say that I blame her for recanting her recant. :^)
Oh, brother...this could have been forgotten by everyone but the likes of us observant conservatives in about a week -- but now, things are going to get uggggly.
You may remember that in the Tawana Brawley case, she was initially believed by the media majority to have been truly raped and beaten. Her mother made the now-infamous charges against the law enforcement figures in the area (including Harry Crist and Steven Pagones), but then refused to be questioned by the police. That's when Al Sharpton stepped in, giving her "sanctuary" at some church, and refused to allow police inside to interrogate her.
In this case too, people who know the truth are leading blindly faithful supporters on, and they will be loath to admit when they discover they have been duped.
I am not sure how I want this to be resolved -- quickly, so we can get it over with, or in a long, slow, dragged out scandal, so the idiots who leap to defend her will be exposed and shamed.
BTW...it was also on radio station KHVN that Lee Alcorn, the former President of the Dallas branch of the NAACP, made these remarks last year regarding the selection of Joe Lieberman as Gore's running mate:
Speaking on a gospel talk radio show on station KHVN on Monday, Alcorn said: "If we get a Jew person, then what I'm wondering is, I mean, what is this movement for, you know? Does it have anything to do with the failed peace talks?"Alcorn continued, "So I think we need to be very suspicious of any kind of partnerships between the Jews at that kind of level because we know that their interest primarily has to do with money and these kind of things."
Not really, Susan Smith killed her children then made up a story to try to get away with it. She didn't intentionally say it was a black person in order to stir up racist tensions.
This woman, going so far as to mutilate her flesh merely to stir up racial tension and cause people to blame whites for being racist. This was an act of pure pathological hatred and is IMHO a Hate Crime.
The odds in that game are against 'em, so they'll do whatever they think it takes to "win the lottery" by "virtue" of their own influence. Maybe they're in it for the 15 minutes of fame or maybe they think a coupla white good ol' boys will be identified so Rev. Al, JesseJ & JohnnyC could whoop together a court case that might just pay millions in compensation for all that lost lunch money they've been stealing from their children all these years.
Into this twinge of guilty conscience, the conservative message may be sown--at least up until the time the initials get carved into the chest, that is.
HF
Executive Director, Coalition Against Insurance Fraud
Judiciary Committee
U.S. House of Representatives
August 4, 1999
Good morning and thank you for the opportunity to testify here today. My name is Dennis Jay and I'm the Executive Director of the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud. We are a Washington, D.C.-based national alliance of public interest groups, government organizations and private insurance companies who are dedicated to fighting all forms of insurance fraud. We seek to curb fraud through public advocacy, consumer education and research.
Our organization takes no position related to federal solutions to curb hate crime. Our purpose here today is to convey one aspect of this problem we see growing, and is likely to affect how communities respond to hate crimes.
One of the responsibilities of our organization is to monitor local as well as national trends concerning insurance fraud. Our goal is to spot new or changing criminal behavior so law enforcement and victims can better prepare to counter these economic crimes, or at least be aware of them when they do occur.
In late 1997, our national data showed a small but certain rise in the number of arrests and convictions of people who stage hate crimes for the purposes of illegally collecting on insurance policies. These cases involved property damage to homes and cars, either by burning, defacing or damaging them in some other way. During the preceding years, our systems logged few, if any, of these types of cases. We perhaps saw one or two cases a year. In 1998, we started logging one or two faked hate crimes a month. While these numbers still remain very small compared to the total number of reported hate crimes, it was enough for us to develop an initial inquiry into whether these few cases might be the beginning of a trend.
From our inquiries to law enforcement and insurance companies, there is some evidence to suggest that many more hate crimes may have been staged by alleged victims for either financial gain through insurance proceeds or to evoke community sympathy. The numbers are not great, but enough to raise concern about whether this crime will grow and what affect it could have on community response to real victims.
A few examples from our files:
Sandra Benson and Freeman Berry were indicted on charges they defaced their home in Jonesboro, Georgia, with racial slurs and set the house on fire in an attempt to collect more than $300,000 in insurance money for the home and personal property supposedly destroyed in the fire. The couple claimed they were targeted because Benson, a white woman, lived with a black man. The two reportedly received anonymous threatening phone calls, and showed television news crews racial slurs and swastikas painted on a fence and shed in the couple's yard. In reality, the couple stored their possessions prior to the fire. After an investigation, the couple was charged on 23 fraud counts covering several schemes that took place over the years, including another house fire. Benson and Berry pled guilty to fraud and arson charges.
DeWayne Byrdsong, a black minister in Coralville, Iowa, claimed his Mercedes-Benz had been spray-painted with racial slurs. When his insurer delayed paying the claim, he contacted everyone from Oprah Winfrey to the local media, charging the delay was racially motivated. However, local body shops reported that Byrdsong had been seeking repainting estimates before the alleged crime occurred. He was found guilty of making a false report to authorities.
Matthew Porter of Williamsport, Pa., was found guilty of arson and fraud in an attempt to collect $60,000 in insurance money. During the trial, prosecutors presented documents that Porter, a former federal prison counselor, sent to the wardens of three federal prisons and a local police chief and left at the crime scene, intended to show that the Ku Klux Klan was behind the fire. In a sentencing memorandum, prosecutors discussed the damage Porter had done to racial relations. He was sentenced to 10 years and three months in prison and ordered to pay $147,000 in restitution.
Angela Jackson of Chicago, an art distributor, was indicted in connection with a scheme to make it appear as though racist UPS employees were damaging with racial epithets packages being sent to her that contained art work. She was accused of mailing the packages herself as part of an elaborate scheme in which she also mailed similarly defaced packages to notables such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson, his son U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush and Kweisi Mfume, among others. She also wrote to prominent black Members of Congress, seeking assistance in collecting from UPS, which she claimed damaged the entire African-American community through its actions.
In Cooper City, Fla., Jerry and Jamie Roedel were accused of defacing their home with swastikas and other signs of vandalism to cover up a burglary they apparently staged themselves. The crime sparked an anti-hate rally that drew more than 500 people to a local synagogue. The face of Jerry, who is Jewish, was blacked out of family photographs. Jamie filed a $48,000 claim with her insurer and collected $28,000.
One reason the arrest and conviction numbers may be suppressed is that both law enforcement and insurance companies generally are hesitant to press cases of fake hate crimes unless the evidence is overwhelming. To falsely accuse a real victim of hate would be the gravest injustice, compounding the hurt and damage already suffered. And no insurance company wants to be on the wrong side of a civil trial decision accusing it of dealing in bad faith with a hate crime victim.
Nonetheless, we know from research that our organization and others have conducted that there is a small minority of Americans that seek to take advantage of opportunities such as the growing profile of hate crimes to use as cover to commit insurance fraud. Arson, for example, is a convenient method to score a big insurance settlement for loss of a home or business. The element of hate adds legitimacy to the crime and is an attempt to deflect suspicion from the actual perpetrator. In some cases, the criminal sets the stage for the supposed hate crimes by forging letters or documents purported to be from some hate group or other, in order to have a convenient scapegoat to point to after the crime occurs.
The economic damage caused by fake hate crimes is not great, relatively speaking. But the damage to communities that discover that their goodwill and generosity has been betrayed may often be severe.
A local case in Maryland illustrates this point. Sonia James of Laurel, Maryland, told police she came home one day to find her kitchen and bathroom flooded, furniture overturned, clothes damaged by bleach, her child's toys broken, and the walls painted with racial slurs telling her to leave the neighborhood. The community, rallying to what local officials called the worst hate crime in their history, contributed food, clothing, toys, another home and $5,000 collected on her behalf. She also received a $14,000 insurance settlement. She tried to point the finger at a neighboring family who had given her, she said, "hard looks." In reality, she staged the fraud, including passing out leaflets from a phony hate group just prior to the crime. She pled guilty and was sentenced to nine months in prison and more than $26,000 in restitution.
Imagine how the people in her community felt after learning that their goodwill was betrayed. Sylvia Vacchio Chiodaroli, one of James's neighbors, told the Baltimore Sun that the incident destroyed many residents' sense of trust and community. "It really makes me angry," she said. "It caused tension. People were pulled against each other."
Imagine still how these same people will respond when a real hate crime next occurs in their community. These fake crimes tear at the fabric of communities, casting doubt upon whether crimes are real or not, giving people one more reason not to get involved in lending a hand to a neighbor in trouble.
As a society we need to deter this type of crime as much as possible for the sake of all real victims. But before we can work to deter the crime, we must recognize the hard fact that people will take advantage of others in this fashion. It's hard to admit that this sort of thing goes on in our society; it rightfully sickens many people just to think that someone could fake a hate crime. Yet if we don't admit that it happens, we won't be in a position to learn the signs and take the steps necessary to investigate this crime. Yes, it's a sensitive area, and one that must be handled accordingly. But if we're to have any hope of maintaining our trust in one another, honest people must step forward and deal with truth, and seek solutions to deter this crime.
Effective deterrence includes thorough investigation by law enforcement and insurance companies to uncover any evidence that a hate crime might be staged. Insurance companies also should be encouraged to cooperate fully with law enforcement when they have a suspicious case. While hate crime victims should always be given the benefit of the doubt, insurers need to be ever vigilant to scam artists who prey upon the insurance system for financial gain.
Public education also is a key to reinforce deterrence. These people need to understand that if they commit this crime, there's a good chance they will get caught. And if they get caught, they will be punished severely.
Currently, there is a large minority of Americans who tolerate insurance fraud, and unfortunately, that seems to encourage a few to take the desperate act of staging fake hate crimes.
-------------------------------
Hate Crime Hall of Shame
http://www.frontpagemag.com/pi_crimes/default.htm
Hate Crime - Socialist Agenda
http://www.frontpagemag.com/columnists/glazov/glazov08-30-00p.htm
That would mean from right side up, it would be correct.
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