Tampa Bay Times And "Not Mentioning Race" Unless The Perpetrator Is White
05/03/2013
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The Tampa Bay Times, which a reader of ours described as "compulsively liberal," has on its website a comprehensive list of local violent crimes in their website:

Tampa Bay area has a long history of violent, heinous crimes

A comprehensive list of some of the most notorious crimes around Tampa Bay since 1980

By Jamal Thalji and Caryn Baird, Tampa Bay Times, November 5, 2011

Only two of these stories mention race:

ALFREDIE STEELE JR.: Steele was sentenced to life in prison for the death of Pasco sheriff's Lt. Charles "Bo" Harrison on June 1, 2003. Steele was 19 and seeking revenge against the Pasco County Sheriff's Office when he drunkenly fired an SKS rifle at the back of a sheriff's cruiser on stakeout. He killed Harrison, 57, the agency's highest-ranking black official. Harrison was two weeks from retirement. The deputy was known to Steele's family and had helped them out in the past. "I didn't mean to kill Mr. BoBo," a weeping Steele told detectives in a taped interview. Steele is now 27.

Killer Alfredie Steele Jr. is black as well, but that's not mentioned.

MARK KOHUT AND CHARLES ROURK: The two white laborers and roommates kidnapped black tourist Christopher Wilson of New York City from a Valrico shopping center, doused him with gasoline and them set him on fire while laughing and yelling racial slurs on New Year's Day 1993. Wilson suffered burns on 40 percent of his skin. Both men were sentenced to life in prison and sent to New Mexico for their safety. They lost a 2010 appeal. Kohut is 45; Rourk, 57.

Emphasis added. Now, I know for a fact that many of the crimes on their list are interracial, starting with the black teenager Nicholas Lindsey, who I blogged about below, and who killed a white cop.

Lorenzo Jenkins, also on their list of crimes, is a black burglar who killed a white cop. (Florida cop-killer  Lorenzo Jenkins should not be confused with Tennessee triple murderer Lorenzo Jenkins—the Tennessee Jenkins is also black, and the three people he stabbed to death are also white, but otherwise they're completely separate cases.)

I could go on, but that's enough to prove my point—in a "diverse" area with a lot of interracial crime, the only case in which they've identified the race of the assailant, it was two white guys. And even when they identified a victim as black, they couldn't report the race of his killer.

This list was compiled from the archives of the St. Petersburg Times, the Evening Independent and other news sources. For corrections or suggestions, contact Jamal Thalji at [email protected].

Readers are invited to do that.

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