So said the Philadelphia District Attorney in refusing to press hate crime charges in a well publicized case.
THREE JUVENILES accused of assaulting a cabdriver and his passenger in Center City Saturday night while shouting racial slurs will not be charged with a hate crime, the District Attorney’s Office said yesterday.
The teens, who are black, were not charged with hate crimes because there was no evidence that the assault had been motivated by the race of the victims, who are white, said Tasha Jamerson, D.A. spokeswoman. Just shouting racial epithets during the commission of a crime doesn’t rise to the level of ethnic intimidation, she said.
“They just didn’t have that in this case,” she said. “If they had somebody who, two blocks before, heard them say, ‘We’re going to beat somebody up because they’re white, brown or purple,’ it might be different.”
Hey at least she said “might.”
Not that hate crime laws needed to be made a mockery of, but if just shouting racial epithets during the commission of a crime doesn’t rise to the level of ethnic intimidation, then just shouting anti-Semitic epithets during the commission of a crime doesn’t rise to the level of anti-Semitic intimidation, and just shouting anti-gay epithets during the commission of a crime doesn’t rise to the level of anti-gay intimidation.
Personally, I don’t believe in hate crimes. Crime is crime and criminal culpability should not depend on such vagaries as the political influence of whatever group the victim belonged to. I see no difference in culpability between a criminal who says “I wanna beat and rob an old woman!” and then does so, or “I wanna beat and rob a faggot!” and then does so.
If some victims can be more privileged, then what’s to stop some criminals from being more privileged?
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The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Don?t bang your head!
3 Comments until now
Yeah, but if the attackers were white and the victims black then it would have been a different story. Getting tired of selective prosecution.
Is there any doubt in anyone’s mind that hate crime penalties w/h/b leveled here if the attackers were white and victims black?
The only interest the Left ever had in hate crime laws was, and is, as a wedge issue to use against the Right. That’s all this has ever been about. Those with principled objections to these laws were, or are, painted as racists by the Left, claiming that opposition to these laws equals not caring enough about minorities. It’s just more dirty racial politics from the Left.
The DA is right though, no? Just shouting some racist (or sexist, or antisemitic) slur during an assault is pretty slim evidence that the victim was chosen based on race, gender or religion. If someone is assaulting me, then obviously he is trying to hurt me, perhaps with offending words as well as violence. If we are going to have these laws, and I don’t think we should, then at least they should be prosecuted according to the standard the DA is talking about.
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