The_Ivory_Man posted...Ammonitida posted...
ClockworkHare posted...
But authorities said that through their investigation, "detectives have discovered that this is not a hate-related incident."
Uhhh yeah it was.
Even if race wasn't even factored, it would still be a hate-related crime.
Telling a Hispanic man to "go back to Mexico " and then brutally assaulting him are pretty hateful actions....
The crime has to be purely motivated by racism to be classed as a hate-crime. In this case, the woman claimed that the man bumped into her daughter, sparking the assault. If she had attacked him without any claimed provocation, then yeah she would have been charged with a bias crime.
"Well sorry officer that black man called me a slur while I was in my KKK robes, so I violently beat him."
"Ah well since he provoked you with a slur that clearly wasn't hate speech."
Contact your legislators and get the laws changed so that any use of a racial slur during the commission of a crime, no matter what initially provoked it, is enough to meet the bias crime threshold.
And no one is saying the woman isn't racist or that her words don't amount to hate speech. Just that it doesn't clear the bias crime threshold according to the law.