Article from Reason by Robby Soave.
Police officers in Crafton, Pennsylvania, arrested a 52-year-old black man, Robbie Sanderson, for shoplifting at a CVS in September of 2016. He called them Nazis, skinheads, and Gestapo as they cuffed him.
Because of those epithets, Sanderson was charged with “ethnic intimidation.” Insulting the officers in such terms was an anti-white hate crime, from the perspective of the authorities. Sanderson had made bias-motivated “terroristic threats,” they claimed. The alleged motivation increased the seriousness of Sanderson’s crime from a first-degree misdemeanor to a third-degree felony.
That’s according to The Appeal’s Joshua Vaughn, who reports that Pennsylvania residents were charged with hate crimes for making offensive statements to police at least three other times. In each of these cases, including Sanderson’s, the hate crime charges were eventually dropped. But the threat of a hate crime conviction can still hurt. Defendants might plead guilty to other offenses, for instance, if prosecutors agree to drop a hate crime charge.
In any case, it’s absurd to think that the crime of “ethnic intimidation” was meant to include citizens who angrily rant at cops who are arresting them. “This is not what the hate crime statute was for,” says the ACLU’s Mary Catherine Roper. “This is criminalizing pure speech and that violates the First Amendment.”
Read the entire article at Reason.
Image Credit:Â By An Errant Knight (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
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As usual, hate crimes for me, not for thee. I hate many things including some people. It’s not for someone or some group to brandish the authority to criminalize me for hating flies, roaches, Stalin, Hitler, Vietnam or Mexico. I’d venture that leftists hate much more than the average human. Perhaps we should quantify hate and punish all the people according to the formula.
these so called HATE CRIME LAWS, just gives the STATE POWER TO RESTRICT FREE SPEECH.
and it’s gotten WORSE SINCE ALL THIS BS WAS CREATED TO SILENCE PEOPLE.
what’s NEXT THOUGHT CRIMES.
so this means , if the Cop calls Mr black guy or Mr latino, or other race. during a violent encounter a racial epithet.The COP wouldn’t be prosecuted if he did it?? Yeah right!! His house would be next on someone’s list.
As usual if a white man gets into a fight with a black man it’s a hate crime, yet if a white gets beat up n called a cracker it’s not, seen it time n time again with BLM who conveniently disappeared after the election, but the president is set, there is no such thing as a black hate crime
That is why if you are stopped, questioned , or taken in, you say as little as possible.
What if the perpetraitor called the cops N——-s instead, it would have been OK ?????
Just more PC BS the police have to deal with the very bottom dregs of society, yet be respectful,and abused by the trash that prey’s on our society. Then they are attacked by the American Communist Losers Union. Support the police or watch how hard it will be to recruit good candidates in the future.