So I finished the book. This book.
But I thought I would take one more look through my files: The thousands of stories and links and videos and 911 calls and emails and Tweets and Facebook posts that I archive. All about racial violence.
Within five minutes, after reviewing just a fraction of the material, I came across this episode of black mob violence that might just be worst of all.
And I missed it first time around.
Here’s the story from Middletown, Ohio, Spring 2014.
But it really starts in November 2013. That is when Jennifer Chitwood and her two small children returned home on Thanksgiving Day to find a group of black people burglarizing her house. Stealing her flat screen TV. She called the police and they arrested one person.
The thieves and their friends did not like that. They called her a “cop-caller.” You know, the same kind of witness intimidation that the District Attorney in Philadelphia says is “epidemic.”
Local law enforcement greeted this news with a shrug after the “neighborhood teenagers” began the threats, harassment, vandalism, violence, and ultimately the arson that would burn her home down.
Finally it happened: In May of 2013, dozens of black people were in her front yard, back yard, banging on her door, firing pellet guns, throwing lit flares, yelling death threats, trying to break in.
The 911 operator greeted her emergency call the same way police and prosecutors greeted her plea for help from this black mob violence and witness intimidation: With a curious indifference.908
The local reporters did not see anything urgent about it either: “Jennifer Chitwood said she left with her family a few hours before the fire because of a disturbance at her home,” said the Local 12 News. Disturbance? Listen to the 911 calls and decide for yourself if that is a disturbance – or a full-blown life-threatening emergency.909
Two hours later, her house was a smoldering ruin. Police arrested two suspects and quickly dropped charges against one. And that was it. No bigger story anywhere until about a week later when some clown started dropping flyers into the neighborhood saying he was going to start a “white neighborhood watch.”
Now that was national news. “Ohio town investigates racist fliers imploring ‘White Guard’ to stand against black criminals,” said the Daily News in New York.910
In August 2014, a “teenager” pled guilty to a misdemeanor in connection with the arson. The local paper described it as “An ongoing dispute between a group of neighborhood juveniles and Jennifer Chitwood, who lived in the home that was burned down, is thought to be the motive for the arson.”911
Ongoing dispute?
The only dispute was whether Jennifer Chitwood should stand by and allow this large group of black people to steal her stuff, threaten her family, burn her home and end her life. All of which happened over a period of six months while police, prosecutors and press did nothing but shrug, shrug and shrug.