A house was burnt down in Milwaukee a few days ago, and different incompetent media and cops used the situation to vilify and blame Black Lives Matter as “vigilantes” instead of focusing on the racism and indifference of Milwaukee’s cops to Black lives.
Two teenagers were missing, and their families attempted to file “Amber alerts”. As often happens, cops refused to file a report at all, refused to treat the girls as missing persons. Undoubtedly because they are Black. Cases of missing Black Children and Children of Colour are almost never given the same attention as when the children are white.
A groups of citizens formed a search party to try to find them. Granted, they group went to the wrong place, the girls were found elsewhere. But would they have had to form a search party if cops had actually valued the lives of the two teens and started to search themselves? Don’t label the searchers “vigilantes”, call the cops lazy for not doing their jobs.
Fortunately, the girls were found alive and unharmed.
Missing Black Girls Found After Cops Don’t Issue Amber Alert Amid Sex Trafficking Suspicions: Report
Milwaukee police have a history of being accused of not taking Black missing person reports seriously.
Written By NewsOne StaffPosted June 24, 2020
pair of Black girls missing for days from Milwaukee was found by a search party of residents who banded together after police decided against issuing child abduction emergency alerts for them, according to reports across social media reports and from local media. It all unfolded against the backdrop of an alleged child sex trafficking ring the girls’ relatives suspected they could have been taken to be a part of.
The girls first went missing on Sunday, but the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that a police spokesperson said the 13- and 15-year-old girls’ cases “had not been considered critical missing and did not meet the criteria for an Amber Alert.”
However, local media was presenting the story as one of the police being the victims of violence from civil unrest (allegedly caused by a lackadaisical police response to the missing teenage girls). Fox 6 reported that seven police officers and one firefighter were hurt in addition to at least three people being shot, not by police, following a series of fires that were set.
But on Facebook, where local activists and residents were documenting the events with live-streamed videos and photos, a different story was being told. A local photographer identified as Amanda Schlicher Press offered her own account of the case, which culminated in the reported safe rescue of the girls on Tuesday night. She painted a picture of racist policing that worked to serve a particular self-serving agenda.
US cops and have a long and sordid history of valuing only white girls who go missing, of ignoring families when non-white girls disappear. They label them “runaways” or other dismissive terms that infer non-white girls are the problem instead of systematic racism in the police and media.