About that riot thing
By Jon Worley

Last Thursday, a St. Petersburg police officer shot and killed a young man who may or may not have stolen the car he was driving at the time. There are many conflicting versions of the actual events that led up to his death, but at least that much can be ascertained without much bias.

Almost immediately after the shooting, a group of people started hollering at the police officer and her partner, and backup arrived soon after. More people started hollering, and more backup arrived. Then the TV cameras showed up, and all hell broke loose.

Well, if you believe the TV people, anyway.

What really happened is that a few people took umbrage at the presence of the cameras in their neighborhood. They torched a TV station's van and couple police cars. You got the faces of white male TV reporters saying "Golly gosh, Biff, we're scared for our lives down here. What a terrible riot this is. We should get combat pay."

Riot? The plain fact is that the only person seriously hurt was the person the police officer killed (thus starting off the chain of nasty events). A few bumps and bruises here, a couple stitches there and everyone is better. Except for the dead guy. His prognosis is not good at all.

Yes, I too heard the claims of a "city on fire" and "shots fired indiscriminately throughout the city". Of course, when I unwittingly drove less than a mile from the disturbance at 9 p.m. (pretty much the height of the proceedings), I didn't hear or see a thing. I live about two and a half miles from the "epicenter" of the "riot", and I didn't hear a thing all night, with the exception of all the helicopters flying around.

In short, all that silly "I'm scared for my life down here, Kandi" nonsense the reporters kept spewing was just that. Complete and utter grandstanding. Well, unless you consider that most white folks have such a primal fear of black neighborhoods after dark that they would be scared for their lives while in south St. Pete, no matter what the "natives" are doing. Sure, the media folks were one of the targets of the disturbance, mostly for statements just like the ones they were making. No one likes to see their neighborhood trashed, and it gets particularly galling when the people doing the trashing are also much to blame for the negative perception that already exists. If I had been there, I would have torched a TV van out of principle.

Now, fine, upstanding newspapers like the St. Pete Times can't be excused, either. The newspaper's coverage of south St. Pete is sporadic, and generally awful when it exists at all. This is partly because the advertisers don't like to read about social problems, but mostly because there is a general opinion in the newsroom that writing about poor black folks reinforces a stereotype and thus is bad. I agree with the first statement, but to follow it with the second makes for poor reasoning. In fact, many (though not a majority by any means) of the people in south St. Pete are black. And many (though again not a majority) could easily be considered poor. There are problems with unemployment, health care and just about anything else you can imagine.

The most common question people had was "Where were those cameras yesterday? Why won't you cover all the good things happening in this part of town?" Indeed, many areas of south St. Pete (including some near the center of the disturbance) are leading the county in increasing property values. The old commercial districts, wiped out with the implementation of desegregation years ago, are rebounding at an astonishing rate. And to give the Times credit, just a day before this whole mess the paper ran a story on a commercial area very close to where the disturbance took place.

You know, in all the pictures, TV and otherwise, I didn't see or even hear about one incident of race-related violence. No Reginald Denny-type incidents. And in the past couple days I've talked to a few people who were in on the "action", and they didn't see that either. While race is certainly an issue, these folks can easily identify the real enemy, the two institutions that should be protecting and serving: the police and the media (particularly television). Both overreacted to the problem, resulting in the unpleasantness splashed across the nation's TV stations.

So the next time you hear a self-congratulating reporter say "Yes, Bambi, I fear for my life", take that statement with a grain of salt. And pay attention to the real issues, not the superficial rantings of a small minority. Here in St. Pete, the score is simple: one young man dead. It doesn't get any more basic than that.

Jon Worley's neighbor offered to sell him a shotgun at "a real nice price" Friday. He refused.

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