Now, Channel 4 has obtained startling video related to such an attack -- surveillance footage from a 30th and Downing light-rail station last August that shows three African-American men brutally pummeling a white man.
Correspondent Brian Maass supplements this material with interrogation video in which suspects Tabias Graves, Landae Woods-King and Nyere Goff initially deny they had anything to do with the crime, only to fess up after being shown images that clearly show them brutally meting out punishment.
Graves, Woods-King and Goff all insist that the attack was spontaneous, rather than part of a larger, coordinated attack or initiation rite designed to victimize individuals on the basis of their skin color. But more than six months after the original assaults, the possibility that events like this one were something other than random remains chilling.
To see the Channel 4 report, click here.