"They're like children really--get 'em in a big group, fill them with firewater, it's like tossing a cigarette in a powderkeg"

Lest you think that the modern era of pretending racial violence only works one-way and "peaceful protests" can be characterized by violence, think again.

In January 2003 Colby Cosh wrote about a curious attack on the Edmonton LRT system...

The Edmonton police are still investigating a New Year's Day incident on the subway in which a crowd of Indian youths randomly antagonized, attacked, and beat five white teenagers. But they've made up their mind about at least one thing: no hate here!

Edmonton police admitted Tuesday they may have been "a little premature" to conclude an attack by a group of native teens on five white teenagers on the LRT was racially motivated. ...Police originally described the incident as a racially motivated attack by about 30 native teens on white teenagers. Now, however, police say there were only about five teens involved in the attack and there is no firm evidence that racism was a factor.

But look a little closer at the story--you'll have to. It is still undisputed that the five victims were outnumbered by a group of at least 15 native Indians who entered the train together. Police spokesman Wes Bellmore wants us to state and accept that only five of the Indian kids were "involved in the attack" because they were the only ones doing the actual physical attacking. If you stand around intimidating other passengers who might have come to the aid of the victims (which they notably did not), well, that's not "involvement", apparently.

Funny enough, when it's police officers not involved in putting a knee on a criminal's neck it doesn't seem quite so benign to the press does it?

Well at least one thing has changed since 2003. Apparently not much else has.

And what of this "lack of racial motivation"? Are the police saying that no one in the mob of attackers shouted "Let's fuck up these white bitches," as was reported previously? No indeed.

"Racial comments that were reportedly uttered by someone in the group of attackers cannot be attributed to any one person," police spokesman Wes Bellmore said...

By this standard, if someone shouts "Hang the nigger" and an all-white crowd responds with a lynching, there's no "racial motivation" involved unless you can "attribute" the original battle cry to "any one person"

But of course, equal opportunity and fairness is never part of their repertoire is it?

Most of Cosh's concern though was the rest of the story, that the fact the jackpine savages were also drunk was being excused away by the cops. That too rings awfully familiar, drunk Red Indians expecting a free pass from both police and media is also a familiar story in 2020.

Flashback: You might be confusing this 2003 story with the 2018 story where there were swarming sprees along the LRT line. Also, previous discussion of the LRT and it's role in Edmonton crimes can be found here.