I just want to take a moment to wish you all the very best for the New Year. And to our troops overseas, we wish you a safe and blessed New Year and we pray every day for your safe return to the land that you help make free. Godspeed to you all!
Jessica McBride has an OUTSTANDING post on the “Lord of the Flies” mob brutality in Milwaukee’s inner city. While it touches on the Samuel Mc Clain beating (written before we learned that this was a drug deal gone bad), it goes far beyond this incident.
Jessica was the Police Beat reporter for the MJS and she looks into how entire families become ingrained in this criminal behavior. This is a great read!
MCBRIDE’S MEDIA MATTERS: Samuel McClain beating
h/t: Peter: Texas Holdem Blogger
UPDATE: Audio Greeting
A friend of mine (a member of the MSM) put together this audio greeting from several of us that frequent our chat, she did an awesome job, click here and listen in… yeah, that last one is moi.
—
Several friends and I have a regular groups of chats, just a bunch of great people and we stream some great music and have a lot of fun.
Tonight, we are hosting a New Years Chat, if you would like to stop in, we will be going from probably 8 p.m. Central time until we all fall asleep at the keyboard! If you, like me, have no life and will be at home tonight, it would be great if you stopped in to say hi.
You can use your favorite IRC (mIRC, Pirch, X-chat etc.), just point it to:
Server: irc.chat4tv.com
Port : 6667
Room: #webtroopers
If you have an active IRC, you should be able to get to the server by clicking this link:
irc://irc.chat4tv.com then simply /join #webtroopers
If you would like to learn how to use mIRC, I put this page together a while back and it will walk you through it.
If you don’t have a normal chat client, I have an IRC Chat, it is a bit clunky to use, but it works, you can go here, enter your nickname and connect to the chat room.
http://games.net4tv.com/chat/cgi/
The audio stream can be picked up at http://www.chat4tv.com/listen/webtroopers.ram
I will be in the room, but I go by my alter-ego, WebNuts, so stop in and say hi, I hope to see you there.
Today we are learning that the mob beating this past week was started by a drug deal gone bad.
JS Online: Quarrel over drug deal led to beating
A man who was severely beaten by a mob of up to 30 assailants told police the attack occurred after he lost money in an unsuccessful attempt to buy crack, according to a criminal complaint filed today.Samuel McClain said he gave a man $19 “expecting to get crack cocaine in return,” then complained to a group milling in the street that he had “just been ripped off by the guy who drove away,” says the complaint.
During an ensuing quarrel, McClain told police, he was suddenly attacked from behind, knocked off his feet, then punched, kicked and stomped into unconsciousness, the complaint says.
Certainly this is no excuse for a gang to beat a man nearly to death, they all deserve long jail time, but Samuel Mc Clain isn’t the innocent guy that was described.
The people that engaged in the beating have proven that they are unable to control themselves in society, and they need to be removed. I don’t buy the “I just got caught up in the beating” excuse, people have reason, if they can’t distinguish between right and wrong, then they forfeit their freedom.
I stopped at the post office today and was approached by a girl in her mid 20’s or so, asking if I could “help her out” with some spare change. At the other end of the lot was a man, about the same age, doing the same thing. I have seen several times where groups seem to be working together on the streets begging. This got me to thinking, in the wake of the mob beating of Samuel McClain, I wonder how many people will feel more intimidated to give them money? Will people fear that if they don’t give something, or don’t give enough, that they will be set upon by these panhandlers? Some are quite aggressive and to an older person, a woman or someone not themselves aggressive enough to counter them, it can be a really intimidating event.
Another Badger State Blogger has had to close his Blog. The Blog General has posted the following message at the Badger Blog Alliance, where he is also a member. We will miss him and his posts from Iraq. Godspeed my friend!
Badger Blog Alliance: Brainpost is done…..
Brainpost the blog is done. As part of the military, I am obligated to submit any postings on any blog, website, etc., to superiors to ensure they comply with operational security, understandably.Even though I did not disclose any harmful information, not everyone in the military has this ability and the military has its rules and I want to respect them.
From my desire to remain anonymous and out of respect for my immediate supervisors and the desire to see that they do not suffer any consequences from my desire to speak as openly as the blog world allows, I am ceasing my activities of posting on brainpost.
A year ago, I made a few New Year Predictions, let’s see how bad I did…
The Stealers still have an outside chance, but the Eagles have a snowball’s chance 
The elections were hugely successful, better than ever expected!
Insurgent attacks are down, but still all to common. Iraqi forces are taking more of a leadership role in security. it has also been announced that combat troops would be reduced, concentration would be on support and intelligence troops.
While it has been shown that Annan (and his son) were into the “Oil for Food” scandal up to their necks, there is no will to do anything about it. But do we expect more from the UN? Of course not.
On April 2nd, Pope John Paul II was called home to God. A sad sad day for more than 1 billion Catholics and hundreds of millions if not billions of non Catholics from around the world… This was really the only pope that I knew in my life. This was the same week that Terri Schiavo was put to death by a branch of the government of the country that I love, in a most barbaric manor… That was a sad week.
After 88 years, the White Sox have won the World Series. And Randy Johnson only won 17.
No doubt about it! Some in the MSM are starting to see that we are here to stay, and we are getting even stronger.
No awards for either. The Passion got three nominations.
The Palestinian issue is still a mess. They have so much hatred that they keep blowing up their own children for a chance to kill a Jew.
Nothing has been made public, but there have been indications that America’s war on terror has been quite effective in the United States. We didn’t have a terrorist attack on out shores, but our friends the British had two waves of terrorist attacks.
All in all, I would say that last years predictions… Sucked
I will probably try it again this year, if I do, it will be posted this weekend.
We found out that the punks that beat a man nearly to death call themselves the “Trey Six Mafia”.
Community meetings are being held, we have seen in the past how useless those are.
Some are talking about some sort of a petition drive to have the police chief and mayor recalled… What about the County Supervisor and aldermen in the area? Seems like I am the only one that has asked about their response (or lack thereof).
While I have not been happy with the new Chief of Police, there isn’t a whole lot that police can do when citizens refuse to call police
“It’s just not me to call police,” said LaToya King. “It would not cross my mind. In places like this, police don’t come fast enough and solve anything. People here don’t trust the police.”
I do want to know the status of Milwaukee’s Gang Squad, this special unit was disbanded by former police chief Lil’ Artie, because he didn’t think that hassling gangs of kids was proper use of law enforcement. New chief Hagerty promised to rebuild this unit, it has been a few years now, so what is going on with the Gang Squad?
Today, Eugene Kane mentioned the mob beating on 36 & Hampton, but he said nothing about how we can end the violence, he just wants to make sure that the Daniels-Mardak branch of the Boys & Girls Club at Holy Redeemer church doesn’t get any bad press. There is nothing in his column that condemns the young people that almost beat a man to death.
I don’t have time right now to get deep into this, but Kane, an opinion leader in the black community said nothing at all about the problem.
Sounds like our elected officials are slowly moving. They are talking about strengthening loitering laws. I’m sure that a gang willing to beat a man half to death will be impressed by this…
At least this may give the police the ability to pressure these mobs of young people, but you just know that it won’t take long before people start crying about police harassing people… A no win situation.
I also heard something about a law working it’s way through the state legislature that would add a “mob crime” enhancer that would work much like the hate crime enhancer.
The paper’s Day Watch is reporting:
Police were expected to present their reports on the mob beating of a 50-year-old man to prosecutors late this morning, and three juvenile suspects were slated to make court appearances in the afternoon.
The boys, 16, 16 and 14, were being held in juvenile detention.
District Attorney E. Michael McCann said he was not certain how many adults had been arrested as suspects in the attack, which took place about 11 p.m. Sunday on N. 36th St., near W. Hampton Ave.
The victim, Samuel McClain, told police he honked at a group of youths that had gathered in the street and blocked traffic. More than a dozen of them set upon McClain, pulled him from his car, then punched and kicked him.
The father of 12 suffered severe head injuries and was placed on a ventilator upon his initial arrival at Froedtert Memorial Lutheran Hospital. He has improved dramatically and was in reported to be in satisfactory condition late this morning.
McCann said Assistant District Attorney Thomas Potter had been assigned to handle the case and expected to begin reviewing the police reports late in the morning. McCann could not give a time frame on when charges might be filed against any adult suspects.
“Obviously we’re taking this very seriously,” McCann said. “This is another tragic mob beating.”
McCann said he was shocked at how those involved in the attack could be beat and kick a man after he had been knocked to the ground. “As a human being, where’s the empathy,” McCann said. “Where’s the sense of fair play to do that.”
Do you really need to ask Mr. McCann?
I have heard Mayor Barrett and police spokesperson Anne Schwartz talking about how people need to end the “No Snitching” mentality in the case of the Milwaukee man that was nearly beaten to death by a mob of young people. I heard a news report talking about people wearing No Snitch t-shirts while police were trying to find people that seen the beating. Were these comments a direct swipe at Alderman Michael McGee? I sure hope so, that attitude is killing Milwaukee!
Milwaukee now has an Alderman that says people should not call police if they see suspicious activity, if they call police, they will be accused of racism and profiling. He also runs a local campaign that tells young people, “Don’t Snitch” encouraging them to not cooperate with police.
I have asked what our community leaders are doing about the violence… I guess this sort of answers my question.
The 122nd murder has taken place in Milwaukee, I wonder how deep the paper will bury this? So far they have published this on their website:
Milwaukee Police are investigating a homicide at Wong’s Kitchen, a restaurant near 92nd and Capitol. The shooting was reported at 5:10 p.m. It would be Milwaukee’s 122nd homicide of the year, compared to 88 in all of 2004.
They promise more to come, but if they hold true to form, it will be somewhere inside, listen in the “News in Brief” section. It is sad that murder has become so common that it is usually just a footnote.
Rasmussen has a poll out today that has Howard Dean doing another scream, but this time, it is not only Dean, the whole Democratic leadership must be reeling from this.
Should the National Security Agency be allowed to intercept telephone conversations between terrorism suspects in other countries and people living in the United States?
- Yes 64%
- No 23%
Is President Bush the first President to authorize a program for intercepting telephone conversations between terrorism suspects in other countries and people living in the United States?
- Yes 26%
- No 48%