A visit to the near southside of Indy will that white people are just as talented at living in crime and squalor as any other group (in case this was ever in doubt). An added bonus to life there is the presence of white-supremecist scumbags decorating houses with spray paint and, when that’s not enough fun, burning them to the ground.
The yahoos in the story thought people of a dark hue were moving into a house (they weren’t, in fact, making this crime of no use even to the brainless perps). They torched the house and ended up burning an extra dwelling and fucking up two others.
Sure, garbage like this happens now and then in the States, but this is my city, and these people made me sick. It usually seems that the races get along pretty well here, and many neighborhoods are integrated. I’m just totally disgusted.
FTR, I’m white, but other white people in that neighborhood seemed equally thrilled with how these little Nazis were standing up for the white race. :rolleyes:
I’d buy domestic terrorism, but can burning down a vacant house really be a hate crime? I’d think a victim or a victim’s property would need to be involved; the house was taken over a bank.
Whether or not something’s a hate crime seems to be based purely on intent. I intensely dislike the whole concept, but there you go. It’s another way for the government to harass groups it doesn’t like.
I think it would be more useful to go after people who commit crimes as part of a group instead. Looking harder for conspiracies and organizational patterns would do more to stop crime than punishing a bunch of morons for having crap in their brains.
This must be the Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight offshoot of the Aryan Brotherhood.
"Canon said gang members apparently saw furniture and other items being moved out recently after the woman died and wrongly assumed another black family was moving in…“They are not all that sophisticated…” (said Ed Cohn)
They can’t get a fire started on their first try, so have to run off to the Sunoco for unleaded, then screw up and get other houses torched and have to go door to door to warn the people they’re supposedly “helping”.
You’d think the AB would target them for embarassing the organization’s image. Although that is a difficult concept to embrace as well.
They sent a clear message to all black people that they will be the victims of violent crime if theyso much as think about moving in. Yeah, sounds like a hate crime to me.
Honest question here: Wouldn’t a hate crime legally have to be directed at a specific individual, not just an entire race? Otherwise it’d be circumstantial, or some legal mumbo-jumbo, wouldn’t it?
IANAL, but I believe hate crimes are, by definition, directed at an entire group. Even when they use violence against an individual to do so, the intent is to intimidate everyone who is part of the same group as the immediate victim. So, in this case, it would still be a hate crime, because the purpose of the crime was to frighten black families out of moving into the area.
Related question: Is it still a hate crime if the victim turns out not to be a member of the targetted minority? If a bunch of skin-heads beat the crap out of some guy because they think he’s gay, but it turns out he’s straight, is it still gaybashing?
IANAL, either, but I bet that you’re probably right, and even if you’re not, a clever DA could probably argue successfully the use of the charge is justified, since you get to spend as much time in jail for selling powder sugar as cocaine and you do if you were selling cocaine. The laws being written about the intent as well as the act itself. I can also see the DA slapping the charge on there, even though he knew it wouldn’t stick, simply so he could toss it out in a plea bargain agreement, while keeping an attempted murder charge.
IAC, it looks like these bigots were pretty close to claiming a Darwin Award with the way they tried to torch the house. I guess that supports the whole Intelligent Design argument.
Idiocy and intollerance, hand-in-hand… Yeah, there’s a ‘supreme’ group o’ yahoos for you. Far superior to your usual run-of-the-mill idiot. I wonder if it ever occured to these yahoos to look at themselves when they consistently fail to achieve their goals…?
God, that is the truth. I witnessed a Springer-esque episode the other night outside of a club I go to for AA meetings. It’s in a trashy neighborhood on the Southside.
People who do shit like that make the rest of the country think that Indiana is just a bunch of dumb redneck racists. Hell, they make me feel like that and I live here.
