is this only garnering media attention because these folks are white?
Yes, and there's a whole bunch of other things I'd wager happened "because they're white," starting with them getting reported to the police in the first place and ending somewhere with it being a hate crime for these guys to spray kill the pigs but not rappers to talk about killing cops and witnesses. I've no truck with racists but come on.
The troubling thing to me, even after having gone over the links, is that I can't figure out what these surveillance cameras were looking for? I can't find if they're connected with something like an ATM or bank/store or if they're just cameras set up to watch the street/houses in general like England? If they're just plain old fishing expedition cameras I'm pretty much in support of people of all races spraypainting over them. If crime is really that much of a concern in that area, put some cops on a beat there and build a relationship with the community. If not, fuck your couch, nigga...er, I mean fuck your camera, nigga.
Looking at that first picture, one thing that stands out is the lack of graffiti-- indeed, it looks as if the owners have put more than one coat of paint on it, especially that lovely blank gray area/canvas to the right of the door. Was this done recently, ie after the cops showed up, or was it an ongoing state of affairs. I can easily see that the camera lens was painted over while graffiti was going up (the can's right there, after all), but that the residents couldn't clean it up-- it's a lot easier to paint over a wall than remove paint, after all, and they may not have felt any responsibility to clean it anyway. Is this a tussle between the residents and the local "art" community? Maybe. It would certainly explain why the cops were given the thumbs up by locals to go scope the place out. But this is just guesswork.
This could important, since graffiti is at the center of this. If, as one comment noted, "kill the pigs" was actually on the next building over, there might be some really venemous personal relations at the bottom of this. Talk the cops into showing up, spray paint something guaranteed to make them see red, then stand back and watch the fun-- something a malicious teenager might come up with, eh?
As for the way it all shook down . . I have to wonder how many folks who live in that neighborhood would be less than cooperative if the cops showed up without a warrant? It's easy to point fingers at the few who get caught, without pondering how many of their neighbors might have reacted. Certainly sounds as if they might have been trying something along the lines of p0157's suggestions (IIRC) about how to keep the cops at arm's length when they start poking around without a warrant. OTOH, these guys could have just been surly dolts; we'll probably never get a straight story of what happened that night, from either side.
Why is this getting attention? Well, the cynic in me wonders if the city papers where the MOVE bombing is still a recent enough memory might think this would sell a few more papers, not to mention that this fits the sometimes popular "little guy fighting city hall" model, with a little shoehorning naturally. I suspect we'll never know, as a quiet out of court settlement seems to be the natural resolution to this incident.
Ex ignorantia ad sapientiam; e luce ad tenebras
