Imagine this:
Your 22 year-old son goes out skateboarding one night. He doesn’t return home, you search frantically for him and finally locate his car, with his unconscious body slumped inside. His face is bruised and bloody.
You rush him to the emergency room where they’re not sure they can save him because he’s developed a huge blood clot due to massive head trauma. The talented doctors at Ryder Trauma Center and Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida do the miraculous thing that surgeons do and they save his life.
Meanwhile, a report goes out regarding this attack: Rene Betancourt, while being admitted to the hospital (for a brain injury), tells officials he was beaten up by 3 or 4 Black men who also stole his wallet. The city is horrified and starts looking for these marauding black guys who beat up a skateboarder for $20.
As the crime is investigated, however, a videotape of the attack is tracked down. Betancourt is seen skateboarding the downward slope of a parking garage.
He’s also seen flying into a concrete wall, face first, than slamming his head into the concrete floor. (See video at CBS4—surveillance video starts at :40.)
He lies still for nearly five minutes, unconscious, until he gets himself up and another video shows him walking, dazed, into an elevator. Skip ahead to his parents finding him unconscious in his car.
Post-surgery, Betancourt doesn’t remember the incident and is just grateful to be alive, stitches arcing across his head.
This is a pretty remarkable story, not just in Betancourt’s accident and the Orwellian omnipresent surveillance cameras, but also what questions it raises about race. I wish we had more details about how Betancourt’s “3 Black Men” story came about… Was it suggested by somebody? Did he come up with it on his own? Was he trying to save himself embarrassment by saying he was attacked? Or was he simply just too concussed to remember and confusing images from the news or media and coming up with a false memory? Even before the surveillance video surfaced, Rene Betancourt says on camera to CBS4 that he has no memory of the event: “It’s just a blank.”
Personally, I don’t blame Betancourt… But I think it speaks to our relationship with race regardless. First, everyone believes that 3 or 4 Black guys would beat up a skateboarding 22 year old in a garage for $20. Second, if Betancourt’s brain pieced together bits of media to create a probable solution, it isn’t surprising that his answer to the problem is “Black criminals”—our media thrusts upon us the idea of the thug Black man (or the evil Eastern European mobster, our evil-white-guy du jour).
What do you think of the odd red herring in the case of Rene Betancourt? What strikes you most about it?
Is it representative of modern society, or just an odd one-off case of a guy who got awfully lucky to be found before he died of his head injury?
Flat out liar, he remembered detail and gave it to the police. Yet his sister claims he does not remember anything. Where the hell did the detail come from if he did not remember anything? Thank god 3 black men were not walking back from a shop that night, the police would have shot first and asked questions later. He should be charged and prosecuted for what he said. If the video had not surfaced not only would people be looking at black men with suspicion but he would have STOLEN those donations made for his recovery. He is a… Read more »
Many white people will make excuses for this man’s behavior just as the author of this article did. I no longer shake my fist and ask where is the real justice (why hasn’t he been charged with falsifying a police report?). As far as i’m concerned justice has already been served! There’s a new judge, jury and executioner and her name is Google. She doesn’t keep secrets and she doesn’t seal records. Now…back to this young man. Job interview with a credible organization that believes in diversity? Good luck with that.
America hates black people whats more funny, is that we were brought here in slavery. Jerry Sandusky molests children hes thought of as an individual. Black man commits a crime hes thought of as “those people” plain and simple. I am an honest hard working black man and when i decide to dress down for a certain day, i get the “best” looks walking into the bank. Oh and lets not for get the looks while walking with my black friends even though were all educated, its how society makes my people look. see a group of white kids they… Read more »
I think there’s this pervasive viewpoint of minorities in general, not necessarily just blacks, but asians, hispanics and middle-easterners, that they “all look alike.” So it gets more response when a kid says 3 or 4 black guys attacked me and little else is offered in terms of description or detail of the incident, but that is generally enough for law enforcement to work with. It seems somehow more believable than 3 or 4 white guys attacked me.
“Violent crime against whites and blacks was committed primarily by members of the victims’ own race: Sixty-six percent of white victims and 76 percent of black victims stated the offender was of the same race as the victim.”
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/press/vvr98pr.cfm
That took me less then five minutes to find via Google. As a Black man it is highly upsetting that we are constantly blamed for violent crimes especially against white people. If anything both races are predominantly responsible for the victimization of their own ethnic groups.
Please don’t believe the media hype.
I just realized how that still photo looks like literally nothing.
Apologies to all for that, I wasn’t able to find an embed-able news clip that featured his surveillance footage (one was supposed to be embed-able but wouldn’t work).
Personally, I do blame Betancourt if he in any way perpetrated the story. The rest of your article is dead on.
It sounds like he was of reduced competancy though. Is someone really responsible for what they say coming out of a concussion?
Yes they are responsible when what they say could possibly cause innocent people to go to jail.