http://hamptonroads.com.nyud.net/2012/05/beating-church-and-brambletonThe next day, Forster searched Twitter for mention of the attack.
One post chilled him.
"I feel for the white man who got beat up at the light," wrote one person.
"I don't," wrote another, indicating laughter. "(do it for trayvon martin)"
Forster and Rostami, both white, suffered a beating at the hands of a crowd of black teenagers.
Forster and Rostami wondered if the officer who answered their call treated all crime victims the same way. When Rostami, who admits she was hysterical, tried to describe what had happened, she says the officer told her to shut up and get in the car. Both said the officer did not record any names of witnesses who stopped to help. Rostami said the officer told them the attackers were "probably juveniles anyway. What are we going to do? Find their parents and tell them?"
The officer pointed to public housing in the area and said large groups of teenagers look for trouble on the weekends. "It's what they do," he told Forster.
Could that be true? Could violent mobs of teens be so commonplace in Norfolk that police and victims have no recourse?
The Pilot owes readers -- and a national audience, now that Drudge has picked up the incident -- a detailed explanation of why and how it covered up this story.
Given the paper's direct political ties to the Obama administration, the paper has a LOT of 'splaining to do.
(Maurice Jones, former publisher of The Pilot, was appointed deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in March:
http://hamptonroads.com/2012/03/senate-confirms-virginianpilot-publisher-hud-post)
It certainly serves the administration's purposes to have stories of black-on-white crime suppressed in the wake of recent national interest in the Trayvon Martin story.
