There they were, four African-American fugitives, where you least expect to find them: in the St. Paul suburb of Maplewood, Minn. High above Highway 36, a pair of Clear Channel Outdoor digital billboards displayed four electronic “Wanted” posters over the weekend. All showed exclusively black faces—along with the word “WANTED” and the FBI’s official seal and local phone number—to people in vehicles heading east and west through the East Metro—most of whom were likely driving while white. According to the 2000 Census, fewer than 4 percent of Maplewood residents are black.
The digital wanted posters are part of a national program through which Clear Channel makes advertising space available to the FBI, as well as for Amber Alerts for missing children, according to FBI Minneapolis Division spokesman Paul McCabe. (Clear Channel would not sell digital billboard ad space for Harry Shearer’s new anti-Bush CD, however.) The FBI Minneapolis Division sends Clear Channel timely selections from various most-wanted lists, and in as few as 10 minutes, Clear Channel places the messages in areas the FBI suggests or wherever ad slots are available within Clear Channel’s network of 16 metro-area digital billboards.
(Clear Channel didn’t return a call for this post.)
The Maplewood billboard fugitives included one man from an “America’s Most Wanted” list; it isn’t clear what lists the others were drawn from. (McCabe says he’ll get more info on that — check back for an update here.)
None of the faces on the current national FBI most wanted list (which includes “Usama Bin Laden”) appears to belong to African-Americans. The Minneapolis Division’s current online “Featured Fugitives” are both white. Ramsey County’s most wanted list, which McCabe suggested as a possible source of billboard fugitives, has five men, two black, none matching the billboards. As McCabe explained the billboard program, the fact that four featured fugitives in Maplewood on Sunday were African-American was luck of the draw, and indeed there may be an entirely different slate of wanted men above Highway 36 by now.
In Maplewood, each digital wanted poster appeared for a few seconds as the billboard cycled through a series of ads and public service announcements: Toyota, Wendy’s, the 3M Championship Golf Tournament, National Night Out. Three of the digital wanted posters named the fugitives (but not why they’re wanted) and gave only a couple items of description: height, weight, nickname or tattoo. (McCabe said studies show information beyond a picture and a phone number can overload viewers.) The fourth was for an unidentified serial bank robber and listed possible ranges for his height and weight. All four showed photos of the dark-skinned fugitives in colors that Clear Channel describes on its Web site as “vibrant,” with “crystal-clear” resolution. (Digital billboards themselves don’t photograph readily, so the accompanying photos don’t do the originals justice.)
On Monday, Clear Channel’s four digital billboards in Minneapolis showed no wanted posters and only one public service announcement: a generic admonition to hug your children. That was on the billboards above downtown’s Block E development, which—as MnIndy reported last month—has displayed announcements for Minneapolis City Council Member Lisa Goodman’s “Dog Grounds” nonprofit organization. Goodman successfully sought a special zoning waiver for the signs last year. Digital billboards, just coming into wide use, continue to face zoning hurdles as they spread around the metro.
Clear Channel is offering a special package for ads running on its Twin Cities digital billboards during the Republican National Convention. You can buy an ad—which will receive 1,250 eight-second spots each day from Aug. 25–Sept. 7 for a total circulation of 661,353—for $50,000. If by then presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama is on the run for violating federal campaign laws, maybe he can get a spot in Maplewood for free.
6 Comments »
Comment posted July 22, 2008 @ 11:54 am
I see your point.
This is very odd since the majority of the people wanted by the FBI for murder are Mexican nationals who came here, no doubt, through perfectly legal means.
I guess Obama is going to have to change his name to Barak Hernandez if he wants to hit the big time.
Comment posted July 22, 2008 @ 4:54 pm
I see your point.
This is very odd since the majority of the people wanted by the FBI for murder are Mexican nationals who came here, no doubt, through perfectly legal means.
I guess Obama is going to have to change his name to Barak Hernandez if he wants to hit the big time.
Comment posted July 23, 2008 @ 3:53 am
I can't decide if I'm more offended at the obvious racism or potential for this to become more widespread. I picture 'Minority Report' in my head, with OLED walls and transparent screens on glass on the sides of buildings and everywhere in shopping malls instantly changing at the will of some government agency to get out an urgent bulletin. Okay, a bit far fetched. But with these billboards which just claim that someone is wanted but doesn't actually say what they did… this is getting to be a bit much.
Comment posted July 23, 2008 @ 8:53 am
I can’t decide if I’m more offended at the obvious racism or potential for this to become more widespread. I picture ‘Minority Report’ in my head, with OLED walls and transparent screens on glass on the sides of buildings and everywhere in shopping malls instantly changing at the will of some government agency to get out an urgent bulletin. Okay, a bit far fetched. But with these billboards which just claim that someone is wanted but doesn’t actually say what they did… this is getting to be a bit much.
Comment posted July 24, 2008 @ 5:21 am
As every solid citizen of the twin Cities knows, Maplewood has been, and continues to be, a hotbed for Radical Islamo-fascists, Mexican Drug Lords, Irish drunks, Italian mafioso, Haitian ganja dealers, French bread re-sellers, Germanic beer smugglers, Dutch dyke-pluggers, Russian vodka distillers, Swedish illegals baking inferior lefse, substandard Norwegian pickled herring and a host of other foreign intruders. The officialdom in Maplewood are wise and they listen daily to Joe Soucheray for guidance. If I were the mayor of Maplewood, I'd put up many more of those electronic billboard do-hickies so as to stop the myriad criminal element before it is too late. Those who claim racism are likely part of the criminal conspiracy fueled by Hispanic coke smugglers and Argentinian Nazi-hiders. You go, Maplewood!
Comment posted July 24, 2008 @ 10:21 am
As every solid citizen of the twin Cities knows, Maplewood has been, and continues to be, a hotbed for Radical Islamo-fascists, Mexican Drug Lords, Irish drunks, Italian mafioso, Haitian ganja dealers, French bread re-sellers, Germanic beer smugglers, Dutch dyke-pluggers, Russian vodka distillers, Swedish illegals baking inferior lefse, substandard Norwegian pickled herring and a host of other foreign intruders. The officialdom in Maplewood are wise and they listen daily to Joe Soucheray for guidance. If I were the mayor of Maplewood, I’d put up many more of those electronic billboard do-hickies so as to stop the myriad criminal element before it is too late. Those who claim racism are likely part of the criminal conspiracy fueled by Hispanic coke smugglers and Argentinian Nazi-hiders. You go, Maplewood!
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