Police: Tulsa killings "appeared to be totally random"
Jake England, 19 (left), and Alvin Watts, 32, were arrested in connection with a wave of deadly shootings in Tulsa, Okla., early Friday April 6, 2012. / CBS News
(AP) TULSA, Okla. - Tulsa police say there was no connection between the suspects and victims in a series of shootings that terrorized the city's black community.
Police Chief Chuck Jordan said Sunday the victims "appeared to be totally random."
Three people were killed and two seriously wounded in the shootings early Friday. Jordan says the two who survived have been released from the hospital.
Police have said there is a connection between the shootings and the shooting of a suspect's father by a black man two years ago.
All the victims of the shooting spree are black. Police previously described the two suspects as white.
Acting on an anonymous tip, police took the suspects into a custody at a home just outside town around 2 a.m. Authorities said they planned to charge them with murder and other offenses in a series of shootings early Friday that left three people dead and two critically wounded, all of them black.
Police identified both suspects as white but said investigators have not said whether the attacks on the city's predominantly black north side were racially motivated, as many in the community feared.
Police spokesman Jason Willingham said investigators are looking at a Facebook page in which it appears one of the men, 19-year-old Jake England, expressed anger over his father being shot and killed by a black man. Willingham said police were aware of the page but he could not say for certain it was England's.
A Thursday update on the Facebook page noted it has been two years since England's father died and "it's hard not to go off" between that anniversary and the death of his fiancee earlier this year.
A friend of the family, Susan Sevenstar, told the Associated Press that England's fiancee had killed herself in January. The Facebook page had been taken down Sunday afternoon.
The other man arrested was identified as Alvin Watts, 32. It was not immediately clear whether the men had attorneys.
2 suspects arrested in Okla. shootings
Neighbors fearful after shootings in Tulsa
3 dead, 2 wounded in Tulsa shooting spree
The Rev. Warren Blakney Sr., president of the Tulsa NAACP, said the arrests came as a big relief.
"The community once again can go about its business without fear of there being a shooter on the streets on today, on Easter morning," he said.
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Racial bias
In 2009, law enforcement agencies reported that 3,816 single-bias hate crime offenses were racially motivated. Of these offenses:
71.4 percent were motivated by anti-black bias.
17.1 percent resulted from anti-white bias.
5.5 percent occurred because of biases against groups of individuals consisting of more than one race (anti-multiple races, group).
3.9 percent resulted from anti-Asian/Pacific Islander bias.
2.2 percent were motivated by anti-American Indian/Alaskan Native bias. (Based on Table 1.)
http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2009/incidents.html
All things considered (History of white supremacy, oppression, marginalization, genocide against people of color, and lynchings) whites have nothing to say to African Americans about injustice. NOTHING!!! You have a propensity of misinformation that is persistently disseminated in an effort to ensure that White economic power is maintained. Conversations about race are consistently dumbed down to make it seem like it is a problem of race relations when in fact it is a problem of racial oppression--and sorry Blacks and other people of color are not from the oppressor class. And if this makes you uncomfortable or you are objectionable to it--so what. You can refute it...not with any substance. The reason that what I am saying is not popular is because African Americans don't own any media outlets--and no BET is not African American owned you idiots. So every media outlet is owned by people who don't have an interest in telling the truth, but more of an interest in maintaining a lie to protect the unequal allocation of resources among racial groups. So 9 times out of 10 the most popular notions are synonymous with the most false notions. I.e. This ******* post that I am responding too.
Don't be so sure, there are a lot of baggers who are resentful of the fact that their ilk are no longer a majority in America, and they will not want to go out quietly.
Expect to see a few more of these episodes in the near future, until a few capital sentences puts the fear of responsibility into them.
On a side note, if our president wouldn't waste so much time and energy trying to appease these miscreants, perhaps they wouldn't take his futile gestures for weakness, and wouldn't be so quick to resort to domestic terrorism.
The first part of that is probably correct but "few" is an under estimate. I anticipate a great deal more and occuring in all parts of the U.S. though the majority will probably take place south of the 35th parallel.
As for the rest of it, I am not so optimistic. These yahoos have their bigotry so ingrained that they are far past the point where it makes any difference whether we use sweet reason or the 2 X 4 of punitive legislation.
Remember Joseph Stack? He was the twit who flew his airplane into an IRS building in Austin a little over two years ago. Most of our far right warriors are not only racist to some degree or other but are perfectly willing to die for their corrupt ideology; they have the same mentality as the suicide bomber and about as much ethics. The prospect of life imprisonment or lethal injection means absolutely nothing to them - we're not just dealing with an archaic belief system but a crippling, nation destroying psychosis. I can't even be sure it's treatable.
"On a side note, if our president wouldn't waste so much time and energy trying to appease these miscreants, perhaps they wouldn't take his futile gestures for weakness, and wouldn't be so quick to resort to domestic terrorism."
Or trying to appease the GOP in general. The modern iteration of a once "grand" old party is the incubator of all the fluff and nonsense we have to deal with now; from incidents like this to opposition to anything remotely resembling a sane health care system or an alternative energy plan. If I had a nickel for every letter I have written to that man pleading with him not to make nice with these yaps I could have bought out Carlos Slim.
This seems like a cut and dried case of psycho revenge killer.
Maybe the black guy shouldn't have shot his father??? That act set the dominos falling....
http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2012/04/06/crowd-beats-strips-robs-tourist-on-st-patricks-day-incident-caught-on-camera/#comments
Come to that, we can't even be sure these two honchos are the ones who shot up those other folks. Time enough for a trial to sort all that out.
And finally I do not particularly care whether young master England is white, Indian, Hawaiian, Mexican, or mongrel. If it turns out he was involved and it really was the race related hate crime I am so certain it is to be, then justice will not be served until he and his partner (should he also be found guilty) are locked up, the key thrown away and left to die in prison.