This one goes out to Ronnie Brown, just to let you know after jawing about Jews, I’m back on the job. Wherever real Black men are crying out for help in the white man’s search for nonexistent Black men, I’ll be there.

Reported this yesterday as part of my work at Columbia:

VIKING LIE KINGS
By Dan Charnas
Columbia Graduate School of Journalism

Two Norwegian tourists were arrested yesterday for lying to police about being mugged by a black man in Central Park.

Espen Skotterud, 24, and Are Kjaer, 24, of Oslo, Norway, called 911 on Monday night to report they had been robbed at knifepoint by a black male in his 20s. Minutes later, they accompanied police officers on a manhunt through the park that turned up nothing.

But yesterday morning, the pair was snared by NYPD detectives as they were checking out of their hostel, and brought down to the precinct. Once there, a thorough police grilling uncovered fjords in their story, and the two men were arrested after confessing they made up the whole thing.

According to police, Skotterud and Kjaer sent their distress call from a payphone near the Boathouse at 11:35 p.m. on Monday night, saying they were robbed in The Ramble — a hilly, wooded section of the park. After leading police on a NordicTrack-like exercise in futility for nearly an hour, they filled out a report claiming that the assailant had stolen over $2000 worth of their belongings, including a CD player, watch, gold ring and DVD video camera.

But, police say, when Detective Cheryll Robinson showed up the next morning to interview them at the Big Apple Hostel in Midtown, Skotterud and Kjaer were checking out, bags in hand, preparing to catch a flight home.

According to police, this is one of several red flags that went up for them.

They say the NYPD has been having a problem with European tourists making false theft reports — especially on the day before they leave, so they can use their equipment and then file a report before they depart.

Robinson invited the Norwegians — who spoke English very well, according to police — back to the stationhouse for further questioning. After conducting separate interviews, police found that the two accuser’s stories didn’t line up.

For example, police say Skotterud and Kjaer claimed that a black man wearing a “waist-length coat and grey shoes” robbed them with a hunting knife. That would mean their attacker was wearing a coat on one of the muggiest evenings in recent memory.

When officers confronted Skotterud and Kjaer with their inconsistencies, reminding them of the penalties for filing a bogus report, the Viking lie kings broke down and confessed all. After they were arrested on the charge of falsely reporting an incident, police searched their bags and found everything the two had claimed was stolen — except the video camera.

“It was all an insurance scam,” said one officer.

Police say the two men were “backpackers” touring America, and had been to Nevada and California before coming to New York. But according to Carlos Mejia, the clerk at Big Apple Hostel, Skotterud and Kjaer had only checked in for one night. “They had no cash for their key deposit,” Mejia said. “They had to run to the ATM.”

After that, the pair found time to come to Central Park and concoct a story about a completely fictitious assailant, sending the NYPD out looking for a black man who fit the description they gave.

Commenting on yesterday’s revelation, City Council Member Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn) fretted over the “racist pattern” of young Black males being falsely accused of crime, its most obvious example having occurred in the same locale:

“It happened with the Central Park Jogger case,” Barron said, referring to the 1989 rape of Trisha Meili, in which five teenagers were convicted and served years in prison before being freed in 2002 after the real assailant came forward.

“It happened with the Boston case,” he continued, referring to William Bennett’s arrest in 1989 for the murder of a white woman, Carol Stuart, who had really been killed by her own husband, Charles.

“It’s happened in America,” he said, “and now the Europeans are following suit.”

The two Norwegians, Barron concluded, “should be prosecuted for filing a false instrument.”

The phony allegations come after a string of high-profile muggings in Central Park this year, many of them involving black suspects. On April 6, a mother pushing her baby in a stroller was robbed at gunpoint. On April 17, two Swedes were robbed in the northeast corner of the park, and on April 21, a group of youths ripped an iPod from a passing jogger. On May 25, a Peruvian couple was robbed at gunpoint near the Bow Bridge. And on June 17, a French woman was assaulted in the bathroom of the same Boathouse where Skotterud and Kjaer made their call.

In New York, Norwegian First Vice Consul Marianne Kvan stated that the consulate had not yet heard from either the NYPD or the two Nordic nationals. “They may not want to contact us,” she said, referring to her fellow countrymen.

Looking disheveled and frightened, Skotterud and Kjaer were led into a police SUV outside the Central Park Precinct at around 5:30 p.m. and sent off to Central Booking.

According to one police officer, the pair had e-tickets for a flight last night. “I don’t think they’re gonna make it,” he said.

And there’s a chance that the city of New York will be taking care of their accommodations for a night or two.

An Oslo-down-dirty-shame.