Posted by Have you ever had anyone say, I don’t know anything about that, but… At times it can be endearing.
This is not one of those times. I mean, you really don’t want to be an expert at hate crimes. But you don’t want to be a victim of one either, so there’s this, the “Chicago Torture” crime.
One caveat applies: I know enough to be dangerous, but almost nothing, about such crimes. That probably is more than the writers of the links above.
First, don’t say the laws are off base. People who are a lot more knowledgeable than you enacted them. Are you in a position to change them? Probably not. And to say, they are happening elsewhere and they’re all wrong is absurd. You’d better have a lot of proof and examples.
Second, affirmative action, “classes” of people, civil rights, debilitating illness, and the like are pretty darn complex. To erect a lot lines, and declare this didn’t cross over them, is ignorant. But we’ll deal with them, in cursory fashion, in a bit (EDIT maybe).
If you shout “Death to black people” and then kill a black person that is the definition of a hate crime. That you are probably guilty of murder too is not a legal argument.
This case has received attention. There are others like it. Chicago is a sewer. Kids will be kids.
Ouch.
In Colorado the criminal code (crimes that, for lack of real knowledge, fall under police jurisdiction) are “based” on the above concept. “Intention or knowledge” is key. There are other checks and balances (like sentencing), but to commit the crime there has to be intent.
In this case intent appears to be straightforward. There is video, audio, and group communication displaying the intent.
The victim seems to have something a little more serious than ADD but man, is that stupid. You don’t broadcast it on the web. You definitely don’t text a demand for money. You just can’t say you don’t know what kidnapping or extortion is; nor can you say you don’t know when you are humiliating someone–to that extent–and physically harming them.
And they were going downstairs to “break down the door” of the residents complaining about the noise.