"Racially Motivated Assaults and Robberies in Downtown Denver"

I've been working on an post entitled "Crime, and You (and Your Stuff)". The premise is that in this new era of economic stress we are going to see new forms of crime and will have to adopt new forms of awareness to avoid be victimized.

And then I saw this article in today's Denver Post that blew me away:

Denver police arrest 32 in series of downtown assaults

Racially motivated downtown attacks

By Jordan Steffen
The Denver Post

Posted: 11/21/2009 01:00:00 AM MST

Updated: 11/21/2009 08:38:53 AM MST

From left, Allen Ford and Torrence McCall. Denver Police say they have arrested 32 people, part of a sweep to end a four-month spree of racially motivated assaults and robberies in downtown Denver. (Denver Police Department)

The Denver Police Department arrested 32 men and juvenile boys after a months-long undercover investigation into what police said were racially motivated assaults and robberies in downtown Denver, including the LoDo entertainment district.
A task force composed of Denver police, the FBI and the Denver district attorney's office investigated 26 incidents in which groups of black males verbally harassed, assaulted and at times robbed white or Latino males, according to Denver Police Chief Gerry Whitman.
All of the suspects are young black males, most of whom told police they were associated with either the Rollin' 60s Crips gang or the Black Gangster Disciples gang. (continue reading here)

Oh Lord, now we are back to that, only worse. Is this the '80s? Racially motived gang violence? 32 arrested? This is going to get Denver a lot of neat publicity.