The long hot summer in Kansas City appears to have gotten hotter…
"I just got back in town and I heard from friends that there was a mini riot on the Plaza Saturday night," says Shawnee sparkplug Tracy Thomas. "But it involved college kids and white kids, not just black high school youths."
How bad was it?
"I heard that tear gas was used," Thomas says. "And that Kansas City mayor Sly James was down there with developer Bebe Anderson. And they checked in on the police action and then went on to J.J.’s. They were out for the evening."
That comes as news to Wild Bill Nigro who was on the Plaza Saturday working the trollys.
"I didn’t see anything and the trollys were busy Saturday," Nigro says. "Sunday was the last night people could use their Groupons to ride. And my guy on the Plaza didn’t say anything. But we were mainly over by O’Dowd’s."
Hold it right there…
"Honestly, the past couple of weekends we’ve had, to varying degrees, some crowd problems down there," says KCPD spokesman Steve Young. "But no media attention thus far. I’ll check into it, but I’ll tell you one thing I’m pretty sure of; no tear gas was used. But you know, people throw those terms around and they don’t know the difference between tear gas and pepper spray. Every police officer carries pepper spray."
Let’s examine the hilarious premise with this article.
1. Tracy Thomas plays ‘telephone’ with one of her drinking buddies
2. Hearne writes it up
3. Nigro says, “Tracy must have been thinking about some other Plaza”
First, Tracy, it was last weekend, and there wasn’t any tear gas used. It was the usual BS.
Second, Hearne, a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
Third – both of you – someone would know. A TV station would have picked up on it. The Star would have heard about it.
C’mon. Exercise a little responsibility. Jesus.
Fourth, an anonymous loser weighs in, failing to notice that KC Police were contacted for confirmation.
Fifth less than 10 minutes later the story is updated with a KCPD confirmation that there have been youth problems down on the Plaza the past several weekends, but that if anything was used it was pepper spray.
And sixth, police say they are checking and will get back to me asap with further confirmation.
Now Lucky Seven: Never assume. Tony and I were at Jardine’s a year ago when a customer came in with word about trouble on the Plaza. We went down, checked it out and reported on it. Unlike the Star and TV stations.
Remember what happens when you assume? Makes an ass out of…
come on now…
whats a “mini riot”….2 people….3 people….once hearne starts relying on sources like this
he’s hurting the plaza….verify your stories hearne.
Hearne has his funny hat on today.
That was pretty funny.
If it was white boys, they need to be broken on the fuckin wheel.
Burn them and burn them hard.
Jail time and fines.
99% of all these riots are caused by African Americans and the worse possible outcome from a white riot, is a slap on the wrists.
Radioman says that if there are disturbances any where in the city, close to actual Live News time, they will get lost in the shuffle.
True???
down there frequently
I play in bands around town, and play O’Dowd’s twice a month. I can tell you this is routine. All the lil hood rats hangout on the corner, down from Odowd’s, for no reason but to cause problems. They continue to grow in numbers throughout the evening, until the cops make them leave. Then they disperse in smaller groups, spread out all over the plaza…mill creek park, etc. We sit outside on our set breaks and watch it all go down. These kids have NO business being on the plaza that late. They can’t get into bars, the shops are closed, and they aren’t there to spend money anyway. A group of about 7 walked by us 2 weeks ago, and the average age was about 16 or 17. I realize they are “kids”, but if they want to act “hard” and make comments to our patrons and intimidate them, then the age thing should be overlooked. I can promise you one of the lil thugs about got a mouth full of broken teeth, but we kept our cool. You know when it finally happens, every bs community activist will be down there crying racism, when in fact it is a behavior issue. I don’t care what color your skin is, but if if you act like an ass, you need to be put in your place. This is ruining the plaza and I have no idea why the police can’t enforce a curfew. Screw the paddy wagon. Get a metro bus and start asking for ids. if under a certain age, then they get a free ride to the closest police station where their piece of shit “oh not by baby” parents can pick them up after paying a fine.
I’m working on confirming the story, Barnburner
Hey, Barney–
1. I have no drinking buddies. I have reliable contacts, mostly political.
2. I was the one who told the Star about 20 years ago about the Westport riots which they had completely missed. OJ Nelson and David Zeeck had to eat some serious crow on that one–because it happened at 2am on a Sat. night, and they didn’t report it until Tuesday. My brother was a waiter in Westport and witnessed it. So I know for a fact that newspapers are very light on reporters over the weekend, when they just run a bunch of wire stories. Then the TV stations don’t report unless they can crib off the story from the paper.
3. I am now contacting a ham operator who listened to the police scanners. Not sure if I can use his name, because you know how the PD is, they like to keep their work secret, and then can menace any well-meaning ham operators.
4. I am also contacting an eye witness.
So Barney –it’s not like I am a paid reporter, I phoned in the lead, Hearne broke it, and we will follow up. It’s not like you paid a subscription to log into KCC. Just be grateful that SOMEBODY cares enough to alert you in case it becomes too dangerous for you and your girl (God, I pity her having to listen to Barney’s Blarney) to walk around the Plaza on the weekend.
It’s hot and this is when we seem to have issues with youth. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, go support an advertiser. Schmuck.
Uh, you failed to see the KCPD comment?
OK, OK, now everybody return to a neutral corner.
The bottom line, according to police, is that the urban youth problems on the Plaza continue.
F the Problem
Let’s talk SOLUTIONS. Repatriation back to Africa. Offer each kid under the age of 25 $50K in US Cash when they touchdown in the homeland. Get prints and DNA samples into the TSA and State Department systems so they can’t even come back on a tourist visa.
The African continent gets a huge infusion of street level cash as opposed to foreign aid that gets skimmed. The new citizens will probably be somewhat more educated and sophisticated than the current indigenous population. Huge opportunity to create a new market for HIP-HOP-RAP with some King Sunny Ade flavor!
$50K is easily one-twentieth the cost these pricks and prickettes will have on society over the course of their lives.
All voluntary. No discrimination. Offer similar programs for the Anglos, Beaners and Asians.
This solution doesn’t kick the can down the road. It kicks it halfway around the world where the problem can better assimilate.
Seriously
Man. do the advertisers on this site know the kind of racial bullshit that’s being spewed? I don’t care whether it’s comments or not, this crap is inexcusable…and I think I’m going to start dropping e-mails to them
I agree, Smartman was way out of line.
Thanks for pointing this out, Keeng.
And we assume Smartman wrote this in air-conditioned comfort, so he has no excuse …
Not smart, not much of a man
I agree with the other commenters that the racist comments are getting out of hand. Considering you have a track record of purging comments that offend your sensibilities, Hearne, you need to choose whether between responsibility or pandering for page clicks.
Commie Libs
I’m willing to bet Louis Farakahn wouldn’t consider my proposal racist so why should you?
It’s OPPORTUNITY not RACISM. It’s clear a certain segment of our urban and even latino populations REFUSE to properly assimilate. Let ’em go somewhere where they can.
Hell the Canadians sent the Arcadians aka Cajuns to Louisiana/ New Orleans. Australia was a damned colony of damned prisoners.
It’s not like this hasn’t been done before with considerable success in hindsight.
Go call the ACLU and NAACP on me. First thing they’ll do is ask you to donate at my level.
Consider This
The average urban male black teen with little to no education has a 1 in 5 chance of living to age 30. That goes to 3 in 5 if you want to let him reach age 30 in prison. Is that what you want us to do, just keep locking them up?
You send your kid to Rockhurst. He doesn’t do so well. Maybe you move him to Aquinas or a BV or SM school and he THRIVES.
If you want people to succeed you put them in environments where they can do that. Black urban youth have no chance of success in our system unless it’s the prison or welfare systems.
So fuck all of you for calling me a racist for wanting to give people the best possible chance to be something other than a slave to commie lib tree hugging democrats that have abused them since LBJ and the Great Society.
I don’t want to see another 5 generations of black youth waste away while we try and fix the problem whether it’s the KILLING FIELDS of KCMO or the KCMO School District.
And as for me and my relationship with Black people. I could have a hundred of them at my house to stand arm in arm with me in less than two hours. Cause with me it’s not about WHITE POWER it’s about RIGHT POWER so kumbaya motherfuckers.
Fail
Paraphrasing Shakespeare, I think the brother protests too much.
Cue the white guilt.
Right here, right now, in the face of the incessant reality of violence and mayhem, that are categorically caused by African Americans, the usual cries of “racism”, the cri de coeur of the rainbow-money-down-a-rathole revolution ring out as we all bust out the rhetorical measuring sticks which, as we all look at each other with knowing glances, will tell us who the first sinner is that steps over the ever changing line of so called propriety.
Jesus fuckin christ. How much more blood in the streets will it take until Americans look deep in that heart of fuckin darkness and call it what it is.
It is murder, rape, mayhem, theft, accompanied by the sound of the Urban/Hip/Hop/Holocaust of death that permeates and cellularly suffuses the Urban core, then reaches out and touches us one and all. That touch is deadly, real and serious on all levels.
The sponsor of this multiculturalistic horse shit, is WHITE GUILT.
It is way past time for change.
Our city will soon be a Detroit doppelganger.
A disgraceful charnel house where dead ideas, dead bodies and dead policies go to rot.
Change is coming.
It sounds much nicer when Chuckie says it
The distinctions are many. Smartman is so angry that even if he were right, there’s not really much space to go stand beside him.
At least Chuck uses his superior intellect, charm, vocabulary and reasoning ability to structure much the same outcome in a way that at least some people reading this can nod at and say, you know, he may be right.
The haters on this site make it hard for the thinkers…
Leave it to smartman to come up with the politically correct solution!
Be sure and sign the emails “keeng” so I’ll know that it’s you when they forward them to me.
Reasonable point, GB.
He didn’t use the “N” word. though, and two of the three other groups he slighted I’m either one of or dating. Over the top? yes. Tongue-in-cheek ridiculous? yes, again.
Deal killer on a somewhat free form site? Close!
Agree
pthomas@proactivesolutions.com
This is an important story and The Star refuses to cover it. I also wonder how things are going in Larry and Lara land over on Channel 9. They lost their cultural pulse of KC when they moved out of The Lyric and into some building in Raytown or somewhere. They have lost me… and I loved them. We are a town full of pansies. This is a big small town and some Rockhurst guy does not want to piss off another Rockhurst guy. The recession has the media scared to death that they may tick off an advertiser. So we are getting terrible coverage. I am convinced that The Star and the KC elitists insist on keeping our dirty little secret. We are a segregated city. We are worse than any other large southern city. We still practice segregation actively. We just don’t want anyone to know it. So we throw Gates and Bryant’s on The Food Network every six months and go… “See America! KC is Black Man’s Paradise.” What percentage of Johnson County High School baseball players have been to The Negro Leagues Baseball museum? I will bet you it is a small number. The KC Star would look non-progressive opposing light rail… so they opposed Clay Chastain instead. They blamed him instead of opposing light rail. We have hoardes of poor frustrated black youth on The Plaza with nowhere to go. Why? Because their houses don’t have an air conditioner that is why.
Really? An AIr Conditioner?
Expensive cell phones, cell phone bills that let you do anything and everythng (Get your friends together for a flash mob?), expensive clothes, jewelry and we can’t go on Craig’s List a pony up $50.00 for a used air conditioner?
Hearne…per your request, here’s the letter I sent to your advertisers
Hi there:
I wanted to bring your attention to the fact that Kansas City Confidential is currently featuring a number of racist comments on their website. My attemtps to bring it to the site supervisors attention have so far been met with refusal to remove the offensive language and in fact mocking of my request to do so.
As business owners, I’m sure you don’t want your site associated with this kind of racist hate. I would encourage you to address this matter with the site owner or reconsider your advertising on the site.
Thanks for your attention
best
keeng
That conditioned air thing
Dad worked at Sheffield/ARMCO Steel. MAYBE on a day like today he might roll up his flannel shirt a tad. Just above the wrist. Some August nights the window fan was “too cold” and he’d turn it off. Some how we lived. My kids say if you call that living.
Lots of black homes don’t have air conditioning. Maybe their thermostat is wired different for temperature. Marva once turned to me at work to ask if I was cold too, only to see me sweating a river. Just sayin’.
Word of mouth usually embellishes a story like this one. Kids getting rowdy on a hot, summer night. Decent citizens fearful on the streets.
Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
And believe me, the pepper spray the KCPD has is potent. More so than that can which has been in the purse/glove box for three-years since Aunt Em gave it to you. Make you think WMDs.
Be prepared, Satan Claus is out there waiting for us all!
Jeopardy on the Plaza!!!
ALEX TREBEK: “Ok Chuck, what category?”
CHUCK: “I’ll take Sanctimonious-Holier-Than-Thou-Self-Righteous-Finger-Pointing-Mamby-Pamby-Pseudo-Liberals for a thousand!”
ALEX TREBACK: “What local kcconficential Commenter, personifies the politically correct, metaphysically bankrupt strategies and policies, that have conditioned African Americans to expect payments from Government-Rainbow-Money-Down-A-Rat-Hole laws that were passed to reward mediocrity, fatherless dependents and a lack of incentive?”
CHUCK: “keeng!”
ALEX TREBECK: “Correct!”
CHUCK: “I’ll take pretend letters to unknown advertisers, meant to promote the author’s subjective parochial views that restrict the first amendment, and would be an embarrassment to any journalist drawing breath.”
ALEX TREBECK: “Ok Chuck, ITS THE DAILY DOUBLE!!!!”
CHUCK: “I’m all fuckin in baby!”
ALEX TREBECK: *shakes head* “This is too easy Chuck, but here we go! Who wrote a two paragraph letter, recently posted on kcconfidential, calling for, and this must have shaken Mr. Christopher to his core, advertisers, who many by the way, are good friends of Mr. Christophers, to quit spending money with Mr. Christopher, based on predictable, idiotic, worn out scarlet letter accusations that in the light of real time events, are not only specious and falacious, but laughable?”
CHUCK: “Ya wanna just gimme the money?”
ALEX TREBECK: “Why not, fuck it, here ya go, *hands Chuck LOTS of money* I quit. I am gonna get an even easier job at the KC Water Dept.”
What about my money?
ALEX TREBECK: “Chuck, what are ya gonna do with the money?”
CHUCK: “Get a gold frame for the ‘I have a dream speech’. No one remembers it anymore.
ALEX TREBECK: “Its too late. Why are you in Kansas City in August?”
CHUCK: “I came for the waters.”
ALEX: There is no water in Kansas City in August!”
CHUCK: “I was misinformed”
ALEX: “Chuck, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
CHUCK: “You’ll be the first.”
Excuses are like assholes
C’mon! Really!? Lil thug piece of shit has attitude because his a/c is broken? Please! The lil wanna be gansta and his buddies we came across seemed like a/c was the last thing on his mind. They were more worried about making disrespectful comments to females and the guys they were with.
Chuck that was awesome!!
keeng come on man. Writing a fake letter is like taking your ball, saying you quit, and going home. It makes you look like a bitch.
The waters in KC? We are treading them, Chuck!
Love these dialogues, as you know.
The only waters I know about today in KC are the ones we are treading, waiting for Hearne to actually contact my two witnesses to the Plaza mini-riot from last weekend. (Rather than his call to his buddy Nigro. )
It’s now been 32 hours since I emailed Hearne their names, phone numbers and their stories, so HE could be BMOC, (gawd, isn’t that a dated acronym!) and control the interviewing process and post authoritatively under his byline. I chose to lateral the football, instead of him telling me how badly I might have butchered it, by not asking the questions HE would have answered. (I didn’t go to J school. Oh, I forgot, neither did he…but it’s his website and he edits every single post.) 🙂
As for keeng’s email to advertisers, I have seen a copy. Now I know his real name, from his email address being public to the advertisers. And yes, many of them are friends of Hearne’s. And yes, many of us have told Hearne in the past to try to temper the racist remarks. He’s all First Amendment about that. He at least needs to be able to edit a word out of a comment, rather than take down the entire comment, because when he does that, then the string is quite confusing.
I did notice last night that the 2nd post about Plaza riots said it had 4 comments at the time, but when you looked, there were only two. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm! Did he delete two? Or is there a ghost in the machine. Message in a bottle. Oh, man, once you start with Chuck’s game of stream-of-consciousness lyrics, it’s quite contagious. Help. I need somebody!!! Help!!
Three years ago, I had a private picnic lunch with Paul McCartney in Amagansett, and I got to tell him about screaming his name from the back of my Mom’s station wagon in Des Moines when A Hard Days Night came out that first summer.
Much love friends.
Much love. 🙂
Jeeze I’m hungover.
A PICNIC WITH PAUL McCARTNEY!!!!!????!!!
Really??
Yes, a picnic
Just me and Paul, at Hampton Chutney.
give me a call for the full story, 962-1100