Does anyone remember “Dog Town?”

That’s the unflattering name police in Oakland sometimes used to describe the mostly African American neighborhood near the Nimitz Freeway.  When the Nimitz pancaked during the Loma Prieta earthquake in October, 1989, 30 people were killed. Dozens more had to be rescued.

Residents of the West Oakland neighborhood rushed to the freeway, endangering their own lives as they tried to rescue trapped victims. But when police officers arrived, they drew their guns and accused the would-be rescuers of trying to strip the dead bodies. Those totally fictitious–no, really defamatory–accounts of residents robbing the dead were carried on wire services and reported by several media outlets. Police officials later admitted that they had no confirmed reports of corpse robbing. But how do such ghoulish stories start in the first place when the only ones on the scene initially were residents and police?

I found myself thinking of Dog Town over the Labor Day weekend as prosecutors in Chicago dropped murder charges against two elementary school boys,  ages 7 and 8, while our attention was diverted to more festive activities. The boys, both African American, had been accused of killing Ryan Harris, 11, because they wanted the bike she was riding. Harris, an honor student who was visiting her godmother on Chicago’s South Side, was found with her underwear stuffed in her mouth and twigs in her nostrils.

The accusation that boys so young could have committed such a grisly crime shocked the world as it was reported on front pages and in television newscasts. Now comes word–a month after the crime–that semen was found on the young girl’s underwear. Experts say chances of semen coming from boys so young are practically nil.

When this story first broke and television anchors were wringing their hands and pontificating on the collapse of values in society, one TV reporter interviewed a  neighborhood resident who was not buying the official story.

“Those two little boys didn’t do that,” said the woman who appeared to be in her mid-20s. “A man did that.”

Investigating officials probably could not afford her certainty. But it is too bad they did not have even a smidgen more skepticism.

Did they have to go public with their charges even before the dead child’s clothing had been analyzed? Police initially said there was no evidence that Ryan Harris had been sexually molested. How could they know before the lab tests were complete? Why did it take a full month to get those test results?

Chicago Police now say they have not cleared the boys, and it is not my intent to try to clear them here. But I can’t help but feel that the police are now looking for a face-saving retreat. Were the boys in any way involved in Ryan’s death? Only further investigation will determine that. What appears certain now is that there is a suspect out there somewhere whose trail may have gone very cold because investigators focused on two little boys, allowing a month to go by before completing an analysis of Ryan’s clothing.

What is it that made the allegations against these boys even plausible? And they were plausible for many people–black and white. Investigators said the boys had confessed. How long had they been questioned without their parents, a lawyer or any adult advocate present with them? How do you advise boys 7 and 8 of their Miranda rights? That scenario simply does not pass the straight-face test.

Friends have pointed out to me that a Chicago Police official who appeared on camera discussing this case is African American. True. But there were also black police officers in apartheid South Africa.

In the twisted, sometimes toxic cauldron of race relations in this country, we often make demons of those we fear. And those demons are capable of almost anything. Who can forget Susan Smith, the young South Carolina woman who faked a carjacking, blamed it on an anonymous black man, but was later found to have driven her own car into a lake, drowning her two boys. There was also the case of Charles Stuart, the Boston man who accused a black man of killing his pregnant wife. Stuart committed suicide later after evidence indicated that he was the killer. And we cannot leave out the case of Tawana Brawley, the African American girl who said she had been kidnapped and assaulted by racists–including a prosecutor–who smeared feces on her. A grand jury later determined that she had lied.

Smith and Stuart both named anonymous black suspects to give their stories more credibility. Brawley’s story played well for African Americans willing to believe anything of white racists. What we are willing to believe says more than we may be ready to admit about our underlying racial attitudes. But if we are to ever come to grips with those attitudes, we have to be willing to brutally, honestly look at those beliefs–especially when they are reflected in news accounts coming from what we think are credible sources.◼︎