Drawn to Blood

Christine Flowers vs. The Chupacabra

by Isaiah Thompson

Thirteen unlucky years ago, villagers across Puerto Rico reported a series of mysterious cases in which they found their livestock dead, their blood sucked dry by some unknown creature. As fear swept the island, the culprit was given a name: the chupacabra — literally, goat-sucker. As word of the chupacabra spread, so did reports of its villainy: The monster struck Mexico, then Texas (eventually it made an appearance on The X Files).

I thought it was all a bunch of hooey — until I saw the chupacabra myself this past week. At least, I think I did. But it wasn't creeping around the barn or fleeing through the bushes, no — it was hiding in the pages of the Daily News.

Maybe I'm seeing things. Daily News contributor Christine Flowers isn't actually the chupacabra. She looks human enough, after all. But still, there are similarities.

Like the chupacabra, Flowers thrives on blood — although she prefers the human kind.

Following the murder of Philadelphia Police Officer Patrick McDonald, Flowers penned a column last Friday titled "It's Time to Bury the Excuses," in which she sunk her fangs not just into his killer, Daniel Giddings — but into the black North Philadelphia community in which both Giddings and McDonald lay dead last Tuesday afternoon.

Relying, apparently, on a single article written in the Daily News that week, Flowers snatched up quotes from neighbors and started sucking them dry.

"They made excuses," Flowers writes of neighborhood residents who spoke to Daily News reporters that day. "Worse, they eulogized Giddings."

She blasted the "lame excuses offered by those at 18th and Dauphin" — as if it were their job to answer for the shooting. "Here were people," she concluded, "who could justify the murder of a police officer by playing the race card."

Essentially, Flowers took Giddings' sin and dispersed it on the entire neighborhood.

But in fact, not one of the neighbors quoted in the article defended the killing. They did voice anger over the violence they see every day living in one of the highest-crime neighborhoods in the city. Some acknowledged ongoing tension between residents and police — "They want us to give the cops respect, but the cops don't respect us," said one Kelly White — but no one said Giddings was right.

About the murder itself, White was blunt: "All we know is that another black man is dead and another cop is dead." That's not playing any card — it's an honest and sad observation. "Everyone is used to hearing gunshots," said yet another, who added, "These boys are doing wrong things." Flowers didn't bother quoting that part.

The chupacabra is stealthy — it prowls by night. Likewise, Flowers isn't the type to show her face to the people she writes about. And that's too bad. This week, I went to see for myself what people who lived near the scene of the shooting had to say about it. As before, no one defended Giddings.

Another neighbor, Yvette Baskerville, emphasized that the killer was not, in fact, from their neighborhood at all — his family lived near Girard College, nearly two miles away. This tragedy, she pointed out, had been visited upon them, too. "Of course we have sympathy for the officer," she said. "It's devastating for the whole community. But we don't want to feel like we're at fault for something that didn't come from here."

But what's truth got to do with it? Christine Flowers and the fearsome chupacabra both inhabit the murky world of urban myth. The chupacabra is a legend, an ever-spreading whisper; but Flowers is the whisperer, disseminating her half-truths and distortions. Beware the chupacabra — it feeds on the weak, and it thrives on fear.

Isaiah Thompson is a City Paper staff writer.