After a UCPD crime report alerted students to a magazine sale that led to an on-campus robbery last week, more students have come forward with stories of aggressive magazine salespeople on Sproul Plaza.
The campus police department is investigating an alleged robbery that occurred Sept. 10 when a 20-year-old female student was approached on Lower Sproul Plaza by a male who asked her to buy a magazine subscription. When the victim declined, the male and two accomplices threatened her, and the suspect walked her to an ATM in the Golden Bear Cafe where she withdrew $400 in cash, which he took, according to UCPD Capt. Margo Bennett.
The suspect is described in the UCPD crime alert as a white male in his early 20s with a thin build and short hair. There are no descriptions of the two accomplices.
According to a UCPD crime alert released Wednesday, a second robbery occurred on Sept. 10 when at around 4:50 pm a 21-year-old female student was approached by a man who identified himself as “Kody” and was also selling magazine subscriptions.
The man allegedly attempted to verbally pressure the victim into buying subscriptions. The victim declined but, due to hand gestures made by the man, she feared that she would be physically harmed if she tried to walk away without giving the suspect money, the alert said.
Similar to the first alleged robbery, the man walked the victim to the ATM in the Golden Bear Cafe, and the victim withdrew cash for the man, according to the alert.
Now, multiple other students have come forward reporting experiences with magazine salespeople with similar descriptions and sales pitches on the plaza.
On Sept. 7 at around 5:30 p.m., UC Berkeley sophomore Michelle Moezpoor was approached by a short, thin “older-looking blonde guy” who told her he was selling magazines to win a trip to Amsterdam, Moezpoor said in an email. After Moezpoor told him she did not have money, the man asked her repeatedly to go to the ATM with him, according to Moezpoor.
A few minutes later, a tall black man who appeared to be in his early 20s approached her with the same introduction and also asked her to go to an ATM with him, Moezpoor said. This time, she gave the man a few dollars instead of buying a subscription.
UC Berkeley sophomore Ashling Quigley echoed a similar experience. In an email, Quigley said she was approached last week on Lower Sproul by someone — described as a white man of average height with medium-length blond hair — selling magazine subscriptions and who said he was going to use the money for a trip to Amsterdam. When she said she did not have her wallet, the man tried to convince her to go get it and bring it back, according to Quigley.
“He was aggressive in soliciting,” said Bennett. “She wanted to cancel (the subscription), and he told her that she would be essentially stealing from him.”
UCPD is actively investigating the case and has leads on the suspect’s identity, Bennett said. There is no indication that the suspect or the two accomplices are students or have permission to sell on campus, Bennett added.
Chloe Hunt covers crime. Contact her at [email protected].
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@Anti-Racist I take offense to everything you have accused me of. You have no right to base such awful and overly-exaggerated assumptions about my ideology off one report WRITTEN BY SOMEONE ELSE. next time you try to call out someone on an injustice, make sure that’s actually how they are presenting themselves.
“You whites are such a racist bunch of bigots”. You tell me how to describe the attitude behind this statement. Because all I see is disgusting, inhumane, hypocritical racism.
and by the way, no one got money from me. Chloe misinterpreted that part of my story.
hi. I am the girl that was approached by the two men on September 7th. YES there were two men, YES one was white and one was African-American, and NO I am neither racist nor lying about the events that occurred. The first man was white, short, seemed to be middle-aged, and had medium length blonde hair. He identified himself as Kody. The second man was African-American, tall with black-rimmed glasses, appeared to be in his early twenties, and identified himself as DeAnthony. I believed him to be as student at Cal until he said otherwise. Of course this was conveniently left out of the article above, as was the direct quote I gave from DeAnthony offering to give me a piggy-back ride to the ATM machine. Both men are equally as guilty and equally as deserving of arrest in my eyes. They are committing the same crime and causing the same amount of concern for females on campus. It is absolutely ridiculous that this incident started an argument about racism and inequality; you are missing the point completely. Race is NOT the issue here, so stop trying to make it so. And honestly, if all you got from this article is that I was making things up by not giving as “detailed” of a description of the second perpetrator (which was not my fault but that of the editor anyways) then you obviously don’t give a shit about the injustice occurring against dozens of people here in Berkeley.
Don’t trust everything you read in newspaper articles.
I was told there there would be no math!!
At some point UCPD needs to start protecting citizens, or citizens need to be allowed to defend themselves. All these attacks are ridiculous.
@Anti-Racist
Say what you want about racism; we can all agree it is a very bad thing. However, I find it pretty shocking that you would think the crimes committed in Berkeley and on campus are “made-up” and “manufactured.”
Many of the crimes are blamed on black people because the people of Berkeley are racist. Why don’t they go after fellow whites or Asians?
“Can’t we all get along?” Black, white, yellow whatever- How about we see a police presence, uniformed or not, to arrest these guys. I would think the UCPD would be embarrassed and pissed off that this is occurring on their doorstep but I guess I’m wrong
Don’t sales people have to sign a contract or get permission from the UC administration to sell things on campus? The next time anyone overhears a sales pitch on campus, UCPD should be contacted and the perpetrator should be locked up. Commercial speech is not protected by the First Amendment.
One problem is that with a police force as large as UCPD, and with the police department being just a couple hundred yards away, there are rarely any officers on Sproul. Sproul almost always has a large number of students and since their tuition is paying for the UCPD, there should be a police presence there all the time.
Actually the UCPD are usually busy trying to rip students off with tickets for biking through Sproul.
the next time this happens the victim should scream out and students should lynch the criminal (white or black doesn’t matter)
Wow, you support angry mobs killing people framed of committing crimes? This racist talk of lynching is a clear reference to the mob lynchings of black men by racist whites in the Jim Crow South. You should be ashamed of yourself.
“A few minutes later a tall black man who appeared to be in his early
20’s approached her with the same introduction and also asked her to go
to an ATM with him, Moezpoor said. This time, she gave the man a few
dollars instead of buying a subscription.”
Michelle Moezpoor’s so racist. The earlier article said it was a white guy. There was never a black man involved and now they’re just manufacturing one so that idiots can claim that black people are the root of all crime at Berkeley.
Message to racists: Whites do crime too, not just black people.
lol she wasn’t scared of the white guy but when the black guy showed up, she hurriedly dug out some cash to give him.
That definitely points to Moezpoor’s being racist. Manufacture a black guy even though this was done by a white man and then say she’s so scared that she gave him money.
You read as much into the article as Anti-Racist.
Actually, Michelle is part of an entirely different incident and is not the girl to whom the original incident happened or about whom the first article was about. It’s not really about racism, it’s about the prevalence of this pattern of crimes. In fact, most of this article, as with the other, is about the white man, not the black one. So, no, given the focus, I would not say that it’s a matter of racism at all.
Excellent article, Chloe.
Moezpoor had a detailed description of the white man and just called the black man tall. That doesn’t sound right to me because it looks like she just made the black man up.
How was Moezpoor’s description of the white man any more detailed than her description of the black man? She listed their approximate ages, their height, their color. She did mention the white man was thin, but the article does not tell us if the black man was thin or fat. That must be all the extra detail you were referring to.
Fail! You had such a hard on to make your point about race, that you forgot to get your people straight. The message you have been seeing related to crime demographics isn’t that all crime is committed by black people. The actual message is that in a city where 10% of the population is black, blacks make up too high of a percentage of the criminals. A racist is someone like you who refuses to recognize the demographics, and so nobody does anything to help. The Berkeley community should be aware that too many blacks are committing crimes, and the community should do something to change the culture that fosters this situation.
You should be ashamed of yourself for saying such hateful racist words. You are like a segregationist from the Civil Rights era. Blacks are not mostly criminals. They’re just blamed for all the crimes at Berkeley because people like Moezpoor make them up. The crimes are done just as much by white men like yourself. Don’t be racist by putting all the blame on the black men. Next thing I know you’re going to be ranting about your white man’s burden.
Where did I say that blacks are mostly criminals? They are not blamed for all the crimes in Berkeley. They are blamed for the majority of the crimes that are reported in the UCPD crime alerts, but as you see from the report above, there was a white criminal too. You have a bit of a reading comprehension problem. Moezpoor didn’t even say the black man committed a crime. She just said a black man hit her up for a magazine subscription. You also have a major issue with hyperbole with you comparisons to segregationists and talk of white man’s burden. Let me point out that I don’t have any white man’s burden. The burden is all on the black community that is being held down by the culture that results in too many blacks being involved in crime. And let me also point out that it isn’t only black men. Too many of the crime alerts involve black women, and I can’t remember ever seeing a white or Asian woman listed in the crime reports.
“Moezpoor didn’t even say the black man committed a crime.” She’s making this up, but if it’s worse if she’s not. Why did she say she felt pressured to give money to him but not the white man who’s the real culprit here? Her racism made her believe that harmless young black man would hurt her, or her racism caused her to make up this young black man and confer her insecurities to him because of her unwillingness to blame an old white man.
“The burden is all on the black community that is being held down by the
culture that results in too many blacks being involved in crime.” The black culture is not without flaws, but it’s less flawed than the white culture with whites continuing to subjugate blacks through discriminatory sentencing policies like the War on Drugs and the Three Strikes law.
I think your racism is keeping you from comprehending what the story says. Moezpoor didn’t say that either man committed a crime, and she said that both men did exactly the same thing. They tried to sell her a magazine subscription, and when she said she didn’t have money, they tried to get her to take money out of her ATM. She says she was treated the same by both men.
As for the cultures, if you want to ignore the self imposed factors hurting the black community, that is your right. You can go on blaming the white man, but that won’t solve the problem. Until black culture changes, too many blacks will continue to perform poorly in school and in society.
If neither man committed a crime, then why are their descriptions being shared with the world? Isn’t that because the police want to hunt them down?
“She says she was treated the same by both men.” Then why did she say she gave money to the black man (who based on the facts presented doesn’t exist) and not the white man? That’s just plain racist, treating the two men differently based on the color of their skin.
“Until black culture changes, too many blacks will continue to perform
poorly in school and in society.” Are you saying that the black culture is inferior to the white culture? That sounds awfully like your white man’s burden that I predicted earlier. That the black man cannot help himself and needs to rely on the white man. How can you defend this indefensible position? You’re a racist who looks down on black men and women, that’s why.
There isn’t a crime report on the men who tried to sell Moezpoor subscriptions, so the police are looking for them to see if they know anything about the white guy who committed the crime originally reported.
She might have given the black guy some money, because their conversation gave her the opportunity to offer a few dollars to get him to leave her alone. There is no reason for you to think that she gave him money because he was black. She might not have given the white guy money, because he looked like he would just use it for alcohol or drugs. And the facts don’t indicate that the black man doesn’t exist. From the facts in the article, the only person treating the two men differently because of skin color is you. You are making up all kinds of assumptions based the the skin color of the two men.
I am saying that black culture in the US is inferior to many other cultures in the US. I am not saying it is inferior to all white cultures, because there are some white cultures that I have seen that are just as bad. There is no white man’s burden. I have not said the black man needs the white man’s help. In fact, I have only said that the only way for blacks to better themselves is through their own efforts. Anti-Racist, you won’t be saved or helped by other races. You have to do the work yourself. I look down on the black culture that is prevalent in many areas. I don’t look down on individual black men or women, because I have seen many of them succeed. They have broken away from that culture, and have attained the levels of success that any black person could attain if black culture supported education and hard work.
“I am saying that black culture in the US is inferior to many other cultures in the US.”
You just admitted you’re a racist. I HATE RACIST PEOPLE. How did Cal accept a racist like you? This is insane!
LOL! You don’t even know what racism means. Let me give you one last piece of advice. Spend some time with actual Africans. People who grew up in Africa. Then maybe you will understand how much better African culture is compared to African American culture. There is a reason that such a high percentage of blacks attending Cal actually grew up in Africa instead of California, and it isn’t about genetics or the white man’s laws.
You should run for prez. U r one smart dude!
You just selectively edited his argument. You just admitted that you’re dishonest. I HATE DISHONEST PEOPLE! How did Cal accept a dishonest person like you? This is insane!
Right on, brother!
I guess your Ethnic Studies professor assigned you a task to call out racist online commenters. Finding none, you accused the victim of a crime! You obviously have trouble with reading comprehension because the article clearly distinguishes two different female victims. The first victim, unnamed, was confronted by a young white guy and two accomplices of unknown ethnicity. The second victim, Ms. Moezpoor, was confronted by an older white guy as well as a tall Black guy. She is not racist at all because if she were, she would only have reported a Black assailant. Please ask your Ethnic Studies professor to assign more reading homework.
I am not an ethnic studies major, Calipenguin, but there’s no shame in being one. I’m a philosophy major. What are you studying? Racist studies? Or maybe your one of those engineers or scientists who think you’re better than the rest of us in the humanities.
Michelle Moezpoor manufactured the African American assailant. This was a white man’s crime, not a black man’s and no amount of blaming will change the facts. Look at the detailed descriptions of the white men (their hair, their age, their body types), and the black man’s just called tall. That lack of specificity points to Moezpoor’s manufacturing the black man out of thin air.
You have absolutely no basis to say that she “manufactured” the black criminal. You’re just another delusional leftist who would rather live in a make believe world than face reality.
Oh yeah, she also mentioned that the guy was in his 20s. That’s playing to society’s stereotypes about how tall young black men are criminals. This is obviously manufactured and you’re just another delusional conservative who panders to racists.
> Oh yeah, she also mentioned that the guy
> was in his 20s. That’s playing to society’s
> stereotypes about how tall young black
> men are criminals.
Maybe she said he was in his 20′s because he was?
You are definitely a kook.
You know, you’re right, I apologize. Even the Ethnic Studies department would not want to be associated with you. If you really are a philosophy major you probably haven’t taken the intro to logic 12A class yet because you’d see how ridiculous your logic is. You assume certain crimes are a “white man’s crime” without justification. You assume a “lack of specificity” proves deception when it could simply be the victim was too scared to remember more details. And you are still conflating the various incidents. Think about it. Why would a female victim of a crime invent a Black assailant if she already implicated a white assailant? You could accuse her of racism if she never saw her assailant and simply invented a Black perp out of prejudice, but she clearly saw the perps so there’s no racism here.
“Why would a female victim of a crime invent a Black assailant if she
already implicated a white assailant?” The white assailant ties in with the earlier story that a white man was involved. She invented the black assailant to show that blacks are the bane of society. Did you notice how she said she didn’t give money to the white man but she gave money to the black man? The message is that the white man didn’t do any harm but the black man (who doesn’t exist) intimidated her and took her money. How can that not be racist?
> “I am not an ethnic studies major, Calipenguin,
> but there’s no shame in being one.
> I’m a philosophy major
So are you going to cry “racist” when you get in the real world and find you’re not going to make the same type of salary as someone with a science or engineering degree?
Browse through the UCPD crime alerts. 90% of the suspects are black. Fact.
What do you expect when white people are always hating on the black men? Most of those reports are white people getting annoyed that a black man dared look their way and at their women. The statistics show that the UCPD is racially profiling black people which is why they’re getting targeted disproportionately. If the UCPD paid half as much attention to the white people as to black men and women, then more of the accused would be white.
It is this state of denial that has helped to keep blacks down. There are not a bunch of white muggers out there that are not being reported. Students get mugged. They report it. Then the Daily Cal writes it up. The facts are what they are. Accept the numbers and do something about it. Instead of hanging around calling all the whites racists, you could be in the black community trying to change things. The percent of blacks dropping out of Berkeley schools is way to high. Go do something about it, so more kids get the education that will keep them from crime and poverty.
LOL, “Anti-Racist” is the best parody poster we’ve had.
Do you support racial equality or continued racial inequity?
[Do you support racial equality or continued racial inequity?]
Do you support Affirmative Action? if so, you’re clearly on the side of racial inequity.
“Go do something about it”
Well, why don’t you white people do something about it too. Repeal the death penalty by voting for Prop 34 and reform the Three Strikes law by voting for Prop 36. The Three Strikes law has been criminalizing African Americans for decades in the War on Drugs, which is more accurately called the War on Young Black Men. The nation’s discriminatory drug and sentencing laws are harming the black community more than anything else and should all be overturned.
Just look at the sentencing disparities between people who possess powder cocaine and crack. Powder cocaine possessors have sentences ten times heavier than crack possessors. Guess who mostly uses powder cocaine? Poor blacks. Guess who uses crack? Wealthy whites. Fix your white man’s laws and the black community will not be jailed and harassed by the police so much.
Sentencing laws are only an issue because of the high crime rates in the black community. These sentencing laws are not what is really hurting the black community. It is the crimes that then resulted in sentencing that hurt the community. Changing sentencing laws doesn’t do anything to change the high crime rate in the community. It doesn’t do anything to change attitudes about school. It is just an excuse to not do anything. If the black community wants to excel, then they shouldn’t be asking whites for help. They should do like the Asian community and develop a culture that pushes education and hard work in the face of adversity.
If the black community doesn’t take care of itself, nobody else will. You have decades of history that shows that you are on your own. Stop blaming the white man and start taking responsibility.
“If the black community doesn’t take care of itself, nobody else will.” The black community is taking care of itself but is being chained by whites such as yourself who oppose repealing discriminatory laws.
How is the black community taking care of itself? There isn’t any white law that is put in place that makes the percentage of black kids dropping out of Berkeley schools much more than any other race. It isn’t white laws that are making blacks commit more crimes than other races. I am not going to claim a white man’s burden, and you have to stop claiming a black man’s burden. You are not being held down because of white laws.
The black community is being held down because of white man discrimination:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/21/opinion/greenwell-son-profiling/index.html
It’s every African-American parent’s nightmare: seeing your son being
led away in handcuffs when you know he’s done nothing wrong. The
surreal scene happened to me one recent morning.
While sitting in my
backyard I heard adult male voices around the side of the house. I
opened the gate and saw a white police officer handcuffing my
13-year-old son. The plainclothes Evanston, Illinois, officer and his
partner did not identify themselves as police. They did not ask our
son’s age or where he lived. They told him first to put his hands up and
then handcuffed him. They assumed he was guilty, of what we didn’t
know. His crime appeared to be that he was a black male.
Later, we would listen to the 911 tape of what preceded the incident.
It was apparent police had targeted my son while he was riding his bike
home from a friend’s house. Why? According to officers, he fit the
description of a burglary suspect who had allegedly entered a nearby
home. The description they offered: a black male wearing cargo shorts.
Our son was wearing cargo
shorts, but that identification could have applied to hundreds of black
males in Evanston on that particular day. Why didn’t the 911 dispatcher
ask for a more detailed description of his skin color? His build?
Whether he had facial hair? (He doesn’t.) Whether he had a tattoo or
piercings? (He doesn’t.) Or whether he was wearing a hat? (He was.)
SO HE WAS ARRESTED BECAUSE HE WAS GUILTY OF BEING BLACK. You whites are such a racist bunch of bigots.
MORE:
I teach at Northwestern
University, which is home to the Medill Innocence Project, a program
whose work has overturned wrongful convictions and influenced Illinois
Gov. Pat Quinn’s effort to end the state’s death penalty. It’s not
surprising that many of those exonerated are African-American men. In
fact, the National Registry of Exonerations tracked 958 former convicts
exonerated in the United States. Of that total, 45% were
African-American men, even though they make up only about 6%-7% of the
country’s population.
Racial profiling has a
long history in the United States and there seems to be little relief in
the so-called “age of Obama.” A 2009 American Civil Liberties Union
report called racial and ethnic profiling “a widespread and pervasive
problem throughout the United States, impacting the lives of millions of
people in African-American, Asian, Latino, South Asian and Arab
communities.” In 2012 it continues to be a common rite of passage for
young black males. Just ask any black male you know and he will tell you
a story. No wonder some hate the police.
HOW COME YOU SUPPORT RACIAL PROFILING? THIS IS RACIST AND HARMFUL TO AFRICAN-AMERICANS!!!!
MORE FROM http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/21/opinion/greenwell-son-profiling/index.html:
To parents of
African-American youth, as your children (particularly males) return to
the routine of classes and homework, remember to school them about the
police.
They are not always
their friends. It’s unfair that black parents have to teach this lesson
while most white parents don’t. But if we don’t educate them early and
often we may be sending them to an early grave.
WHY DOES A BLACK MAN HAVE TO TEACH HIS SON ABOUT THE POLICE AND NOT THE WHITE MAN? YOU WHITE MEN ARE THE ROOT OF ALL BLACK MEN’S PROBLEMS.
Because: in the 20 years I lived in Berkeley there was never a murder with a white perpetrator. Plenty of victims though. Sometime the Daily Cal should do a “hit parade” of all the Cal students who died at the hands of the local gangster trash. It might sober them up a little
They profile themselves. They call each other “ni–a”. They act like a bunch of animals. I dare you to go stand out in front (actually in Berkeley it’s in back) of a local high school when it lets out, you’ll get a lesson is sociology the twerpy professors would never be able to face up to. They wind up in jail because they commit an astoundingly dis-proportionate share of violent crime in particular.
Worried about the drug laws? Legalize the stuff. I suggested this to someone in Berkeley once (a retired government worker) who had just proclaimed “white people are taking all the drugs”–his response? “That would be genocide”.
It’s like watching a dog chase it’s own tail.
The only racist I see is you. You lump all whites into one group based on the actions of a few in a state across the country. It is too bad you aren’t actually a philosophy student at Cal. It would do you good to interact with all the whites in the philosophy classes so you could learn more about them.
You might recall when all of this started. Basketball star Len Bias OD’d on cocaine after being drafted in the NBA. The Congressional Black Caucus led the frenzied over-reaction to this and that’s where the current federal drug laws came from, an emotional hysteria, the one thing the Black Caucus is really good at. They sure aren’t very good at representing their constituents, look at the condition of the black-majority cities in this country.
Man, u hit it on the nail. Anti-racist is so lame.
[What do you expect when white people are always hating on the black men?]
Plenty of black men are always hating on the white men. It’s not exactly a one-way street.
Instead of “investigating” this, why doesn’t UCPD find the guy and put a couple bullets in his hide ?