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The lovely, non-racist, non-violent South...
http://www.ajc.com/news/couple-held-at-gunpoint-1423138.html
Couple held at gunpoint, arrested after buying home
The Newton County Sheriff?s Office is investigating why a couple was confronted at gunpoint by neighbors and then arrested and forced to spend the night in jail when they tried to move into the home they had just purchased, Channel 2 Action News reported.
The Kalonji family had just closed on a foreclosed home and were told by their real estate agent they should go over to the house and change the locks.
But when Jean Kalonji and his wife, Angelica, started working at the home, an armed man and another person who appeared to be the man?s son allegedly confronted them.
?He say to put the hands up and get out from the house, otherwise he would shoot us,? the husband told Channel 2.
The neighbors didn?t believe the couple when they told them they had bought the home and called the Newton County Sheriff?s Office. The Kalonjis didn?t have the closing papers with them, so deputies arrested them, charged them with loitering and prowling and took them to jail.
Yvette Harris, the couple?s real estate agent, said they never should have been arrested.
?They rightfully own this house,? Harris said.
Kalonji, who grew up in the Congo, said the experience brought back painful memories.
?There, they put me down with the gun to my head, and come here, the same,? he said.
Mark Mitchell, spokesman for the Newton Sheriff?s Office, said authorities are ?looking into it, exactly what occurred, why it occurred.?
A person at the neighbors? house said no one wanted to talk to Channel 2 about the incident.
Re: The lovely, non-racist, non-violent South...
So the armed man and his son who confronted the homeowners were arrested, right? They should be charged with loitering and prowling, not the homeowners.
Above Us Only Sky
legal ownership aside - I don't think the Castle Doctrine applies if it's not your castle. It's not allowed to go all vigilante and shoot people for B&E into an empty house, to which you have no claim.
What happened to calling the cops while peering out from behind the shades in your living room?
Horrible.
Does that mean that house or neighborhood had a history of squatters? My aunt's house had squatters (who produced a fake lease when my other aunt and police officer tried to confront them) for a while before it got sold at auction by the bank. I just wonder if there are areas that are taking matters into their own hands with lots of people passing through neighborhoods with lots of empty house.
Southern gun owners don't bother with shades. They simply stop trying on animal skins and blaze over to their former neighbor's house hoping to find a trespasser of alternate ethnic background.
Duh.
To be fair, he was breaking in. Just, to his own house.
I really would like to know what happened to the vigilante folks.
My Cooking Blog
My new job is in Newton County.
I'll be commuting from Atlanta.
I think this is worse, honestly. Gates was arrested by police after an observer saw someone breaking into his house. These people were already in their house and were confronted by someone holding a gun to their head. That's worse than just being arrested.
How in the world did these folks think they had the right to do that, and why didn't they call police if they thought the house was being broken into? The right to own a gun doesn't extend to trespassing onto someone else's property to threaten somebody!
This is really horrible.
Anybody who thinks this sort of thing can only happen in the south is delusional about the state of race relationships everywhere else in the US.
This kind of assholery is not the exclusive domain of the south.
Updated September 2012.
thank god the south has the northeast, midwest, west coast, and pacific northwest to keep it from dragging the whole country down into a cesspool of terrible race relations.
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/hate-crime/2010/tables/table-12-agency-hate-crime-reporting-by-state-2010.xls
i mean, it's not like there are going to be hate crimes in california or new jersey, amirite?
I never said that these things only happen in the South. But they seem to happen there a lot more than other places.
I also don't think that hate crime reporting is going to show you the frequency of things like this. Do you think this particular incident was reported to the FBI as a hate crime? I seriously doubt it.
I'm going to need a source on this.
Updated September 2012.
Aside from the title of the post, I wonder if the people would even want to live there after this and if not, I wonder if they could do the three day back out thing with the mortgage?
Look, I really don't want to kick start my week by coming off b!tchy, but then change the ****ing title of the thread. You really don't think that's telling?
as to the first, perhaps you're right. i don't see any sources on that other than your opinion right here, but it's certainly possible. i'm not ignorant of the history of civil rights violations in the south.
as to the second, while an incident like this may not be reported as a hate crime, the fact that there are numerous hate crimes outside of the "fvvcking south" certainly demonstrates that hate isn't an exclusively southern characteristic.
and as to both, so what? just because something happens more some place or is or does or doesn't rise to the level of a crime doesn't mean that an entire region should be condemned. i said the same thing last week on this topic. it's intellectually lazy to go around attributing the worst aspects of anything to a region because it lets those within that region feel like they can surrender because how can they possibly stem the tide of awfulness, and those outside the region to be erroneously self-congratulatory about where they live being a bastion of awesomeness and ignoring reality.
***I am NOT defending A-hole neighbors with weapons***
ATL has had a lot of squatter issues lately (maybe its just WSB/AJC portraying this...)
http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/alleged-house-squatters-arrested-1379338.html
http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/police-man-gave-tours-1422721.html
As someone currently house hunting in the metro area,
, I can assure you, should I be confronted by guns by our new neighbors and arrested by Cobb P.D. upon our move-in, I will be hiring a lawyer to make those neighbors lives hell for that asshattery.
Call me Kat =^..^=
It's worse than intellectually lazy, because of the exact reasons you mention. It's born of a disassociation that feeds more subtle manifestations of the same underlying problem. I've said it before, I'll say it here, racism is expressed in different forms in different parts of the country, but it's alive and well everywhere. I firmly believe that part of why it continues to go on in the most "progressive" areas is the denial of the people who live there that it even exists.
ETA: fixed typo
It's not even just about racism. It's also about guns. It's not just my opinion that the south has overall some pretty lax gun laws and a gun culture that other regions don't have. There's a reason that it's virtually impossible to get a permit for a concealed handgun in New York City but in Atlanta all you really have to do is go and ask for one.
I just don't see people confronting other they think *might* be criminals with guns in other parts of the country as often.
That's true. But in both of those cases, it seems that the people were arrested and dealt with by the authorities just fine without gun-wielding neighbors getting involved.
That broke my heart. I hope the neighbors are arrested and charged.
In Alaska, you don't need a special permit to carry concealed at all. New Hampshire has some of the most lax gun laws in the country. As of 2010 DC led any state in the number of firearms murders per member of the population. Lousiana comes next...followed by Missouri and Maryland (http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jan/10/gun-crime-us-state).
ETA: fixed typo again. My fingers are not awake yet today.