Chicago Teens Beating Video

Overview

Chicago Teens Beating Video is a fight video showing six young men beating an Asian male to the ground outside a school in Chicago.

Background

On January 16th, 2012, a video was submitted to the hip hop news blog World Star Hip Hop^[1] showing five men in ski-masks and one white male assaulting an Asian male while repeatedly calling him "nigga." During the course of the video, the unmasked teenager hands his gloves to the person holding the camera and says "hold my gloves." The video accumulated over 1.3 million views in the first 72 hours.

The video post^[1] was updated with the identities of the assailants shortly after the video began circulating:

WESLEY WU – grey hoodie, main kid attacking the man, deleted facebook. EASLEY WU – big puffy jackey with fur hood, blue striped adidas pants RAYMOND PALOMINO – white guy with no mask TODD RAMOS – grey and black hoodie JOHNNY LI – blue hoodie and blue snap back on DANNY HUI – dressed in all black"

Developments

On the following day, a YouTube upload of the video was submitted to Reddit^[2] in a thread titled "helpless asian man attacked and jumped by 7 others behind school my fellow redditors…it is time to band together…" and received over 400 up votes within 2 days.

Amy Feng Responds

On January 17th, two videos of 15-year-old Amy Feng, who has been accused of filming the incident and luring the victim to the beating, were uploaded to YouTube. In the videos, Feng attempts to explain the circumstances behind the beating and says the victim was part of a group of 20 Chinese immigrants that previously attacked two of the six attackers in the video.

Arrest

The unmasked assailant was identified as 17-year-old Raymond Palomino after his father Michael Palomino, a sheriff's deputy of 30 years, turned him into the police. According to the Chicago Sun Times^[4], Palomino felt that his son was being treated unfairly in the media:

While the elder Palomino admitted what his son did was “wrong” and said his son will have to “suffer the consequences,” he also said prosecutors unfairly portrayed the teen as the aggressor. Raymond Palomino never stole the victim’s book bag and doesn’t appear in the video until minutes into it, which proves he didn’t initiate the attack as authorities have claimed, Michael Palomino said.

The Chicago Sun Times also reported that Palomino was the only one to be charged as an adult and the only non-Chinese member of the group.

Raymond Palomino was charged as an adult. Hearings for the other six -- including the 15-year-old girl, two 16-year-old boys and three 15-year-old boys -- were postponed in Juvenile Court as officials sought a Cantonese translator. Five of the six are Chinese, officials said. Their names were not released.

Hold My Gloves

Palomino's "hold my gloves" statement became a catchphrase associated with the incident and inspired several image macros using screen shots of the 17-year-old student. A Facebook^[5] page for the catchphrase has accumulated 1,108 likes as of January 19th, 2012.

YouTube Responses

The video became a controversial subject on YouTube, generating several video responses with varying opinions on the incident. It also reinvigorated the issue of school violence in Chicago, which has been an ongoing debate topic since the fatal student beating incident that took place in 2009.

Search Interest

According to Google Insights, search queries for "Chicago teens beating" yields a high spike in 2009, which has been attributed to another viral video of a beating incident that resulted in the death of a Chicago high school student. The resurgence of the keyword can be seen in mid-January 2012 after the video was released on World Star Hip Hop.

External References