Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Obama expands hate crime law to include crimes against homosexuals

Cynthetiq · 10-29-2009, 08:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru

It's not extra protection when the others in question have no equivalent need for it.

what does that mean?

I don't get to have EXTRA punishment against someone who killed my loved one because they aren't gay or a protected group?

I'm fine with HATE SPEECH crimes as expressed by MM, but as far as the crime itself, BG stealing a pair of shoes has levels of crime already, steal cheap shoes, it's petite larceny, steal Jimmy Choo boots, grand larceny.

so what in essence you're saying by the levels is that it's a WORSE level than the original crime, because if it's not then what's the point of the legislation?

Now, when I moved to NYC in 1991 it was close to the inception of bias crime units and investigations. Based on this old NYTimes article, apparently if I'm being harassed by someone by anonymous letters and phone calls, it's okay unless it's racially motivated, and that's someone else who gets to decide that.

Quote:

Police Find Bias Crimes Are Often Wrapped in Ambiguity
By ALISON MITCHELL
Published: Monday, January 27, 1992
Police Find Bias Crimes Are Often Wrapped in Ambiguity - The New York Times

When a 15-year-old Brooklyn girl was raped earlier this month, her furious father made a point of telling the public what the assailants had told his child: that she was "white and perfect."

The girl described her attackers as two black men, and her father said later that he had wanted desperately to draw public attention to the case.

"If bias makes it that much the better to get magnified or worked on, so much the better," he said. But he also said the entire question of bias was beside the point. "In my days, good guys were good guys and bad guys went to jail. This bias nonsense is clouding a lot of issues," he said. "You do the crime, you do the time."

His mixed emotions captured some of the ambiguities of classifying bias crimes. Defining a Bias Crime

In New York State, no law exists defining a bias crime. The New York City police rely on a patrol guide defining a bias crime as "any offense or unlawful act that is motivated in whole or in part by a person's, a group's or a place's identification with a particular race, religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation."

Last June the Police Department broadened its definition of a hate crime from an act in which bias was the prevailing motive, to any crime in which bias was some part of the impulse. The result is that certain incidents that would not have been deemed as bias now merit the label.

Police officials said the change was made so that the city's definition of a bias crime was the same as that specified in the National Hate Crime Statistics Act, which mandates a study of bias crimes. Officials said the change was also a result of pressure from advocacy groups for ethnic, religious and other minorities who feel the numbers of reported incidents are misleadingly low.

Many bias cases, particularly anonymous letters and phone calls, are unlikely to be solved. Were they not bias crimes, an administrative classification that requires the police to investigate them thoroughly, a detective would often not be assigned.

Under New York City police procedures, an officer who suspects a crime to be bias-related is instructed to call in a superior officer, generally a patrol sergeant. If the second officer suspects bias, the duty captain or precinct commander is supposed to make a classification. That ruling is reported to the department's Bias Incident Investigating Unit, which must review the case. Motive Is Not Always Clear

Figuring out the motivation of a crime is not always easy. The case of John Kelly, a 22-year-old black man who died last December after he was attacked in Queens by five white men who kicked and beat him with a baseball bat, highlights some of the difficulties.

A friend accompanying Mr. Kelly said that at least one of the assailants yelled "nigger" before they attacked him, and so the case was added to the bias list.

But Inspector William T. Wallace, commander of the bias unit, said he was no longer confident that the label should remain, because the police found evidence that Mr. Kelly started the confrontation and that the epithet was shouted after the fight began.

The police must also contend with hoaxes. At the end of May, three 15-year-old white girls said they were assaulted by a dozen black teen-agers on the way to school on Staten Island. It turned out that the three had fabricated the story and cut themselves simply to get a day off from school. Prevailing Attitudes

Last June, a young married Hispanic woman told the police that she had been raped and robbed by a taxi driver who uttered anti-Hispanic remarks. After detectives interrogated her, a different picture emerged. She said she had lied about the incident to conceal from her family that she was working as a prostitute. The only reason she bothered to contact the police, she said, was because the taxi driver refused to pay her.

Prevailing attitudes also play a role in the classification of bias crimes. While calling the rape of the white Brooklyn girl "heinous," Michael Meyers, executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition, said he had doubts whether the assault would have been listed as a bias incident when the atmosphere in the city was less charged.

"I think part of the reason why this rape has been called a bias crime is because it comes at a time when people are really sensitive to bias crimes," he said.

Others insisted the classification was justified. "If she had been beaten over the head with a baseball bat and they said, 'This is because you're a pretty white girl,' nobody would have had a problem calling this a bias incident," said the city's Human Rights Commissioner, Dennis deLeon.

The case stands in contrast to the gang rape and beating of a white jogger in Central Park by black and Hispanic youths in 1989 in a rampage they called "wilding." For many blacks and whites, that case became symbolic of troubled race relations in the city. But it was never considered a bias crime.

"There was no evidence that ever suggested, whatever their motivation for attacking her was, that her race played any part of it," said Gerald McKelvey, a spokesman for Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau.

---------- Post added at 12:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:30 PM ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by dippin

But the fact is that the law already recognizes the importance of intent. Murder in the first degree is different from murder in the second degree because of intent. Assault in the first degree is different from assault in the second degree because of intent.

so there you have it... the law already is in place because it recognizes the intent. It's then the DA and the rest of the justice system that needs to recognize this and not reduce the charges at all.