Links - 5th April 2020 (2) (Hate Crimes)

Only one in 100 hate crimes investigated by pioneering police unit lead to charge - "Fewer than one in 100 alleged hate crimes investigated by the UK’s first dedicated police unit have resulted in a charge, as experts say £1.7 million would have been better spent fighting violent crime. Just 17 cases, or 0.92 per cent of the 1,851 incidents logged by the UK’s first online hate crime hub have led to charges.   Only seven of those charges resulted in a prosecution, meaning that under one in 200 proceeded to court... London Assembly member Susan Hall described the hub, which was set to cost £1.7 million over two years when it was launched by London Mayor Sadiq Khan, as "an exercise in spin over substance"... there have been complaints by senior officers and rank-and-file police that they have distracted forces from their “core” role of catching burglars and violent offenders and diverted them to incidents where no offence has been committed like hate crimes.Almost 150 people have been murdered this year in London, the highest number for more than a decade"
Leftist logic will be that this shows that the police aren't doing their jobs and should charge more people

Hate Crime Laws: Dangerous and Divisive by David B. Kopel - "The great promise of American law is Equal Protection: everyone is equal before the law. Colorado’s Ethnic Intimidation statute runs contrary to this promise, by creating preferred classes of victims. Proposed “hate crimes” laws would make the problem even worse. Different groups should not be contending for special status in our criminal law. Identity politics strikes at the heart of the American motto of e pluribus unum, and encourages people to think of themselves as members of particular groups -- rather than as, most of all, Americans first. Laws based on identity politics lead to skewed prioritization of law enforcement resources, and impinge on values of free speech, which includes the freedom to hold and express the most odious ideas. Until Colorado’s statute is repealed, it should be improved by stronger penalties for the creation of hoaxes."

LARPing Hate - "Hate Crime Hoax: How the Left Is Selling a Fake Race War is a timely and witty new book from Wilfred Reilly, a youngish black professor of political science at Kentucky State. He concludes that America’s real problem is not the vaunted outbreak of Trump-inspired hate crimes but instead the Establishment’s hate hysteria: There is no race war in the USA in 2018. Let’s stop letting liars tell us there is…or we might actually get one...
[He] has assembled a database of 409 recent fake hate crimes, which is a lot... “Between 15 and 50 percent of hate crime accusations are flatly false.”... it’s clear that hoaxes are common enough that the media and college administrations should be less credulous about promoting any new hate assertion until substantial evidence for its validity is assembled. Moreover, authorities need to be aware that some kinds of hate charges are inherently less likely to be true than others. While racist violence out behind a biker bar at closing time might not be implausible, many of the most publicized tales are set in improbably non-Trumpist surroundings, such as the women’s dorm at the New School for Social Research in Greenwich Village. Reilly writes, “But my strong suspicion is that at least half of college campus hate incident reports are fakes.” Reilly recommends that colleges immediately call the police rather than leave the investigation up to, say, the college’s Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DIBs) department, which is likely to exploit it for its own ends.  In contrast, the police, to their credit, seem to treat hate allegations with evenhanded skepticism... while in the past, blacks, such as Tawana Brawley, perpetrated most of the fake antiblack hate hoaxes, in recent years leftist whites appear to be pitching in with more antiwhite hoaxes. And, over the past dozen years or so, rightist whites have started to stage a few hate hoaxes of their own... I have a vague suspicion that the rise in hate hoaxes is related to the similar rise among young adults of Live Action Role Playing, such as going to Comic-Con dressed as an Imperial Stormtrooper and fighting lightsaber battles with other people dressed as Chewbacca and Princess Leia... Reilly’s Hate Crime Hoax offers several remedies for the current epidemic of hate crime hoaxes.First, be less naive. “Trust, but verify.” Second, 'Colleges and police departments need to actually punish individuals discovered to have falsified hate crime allegations.'
Reilly endorses David Kopel’s mooted reform of recognizing that hate hoaxes, comic as they often are, should be no laughing matter legally. Instead, hate hoaxes spread fear and loathing of the targeted race and therefore should be punished as the hate crimes that they are... The state of Louisiana treats policemen as a group protected by hate crime laws, which in the wake of the Black Lives Matter assassinations of recent years seems rational... Northern Ireland’s long history of cycles of Protestant-versus-Catholic vengeance violence is testimony that the state can have a particular interest in deterring criminality against groups. Individual-upon-individual acts of revenge are bad enough for the keeping of the peace, but race-upon-race crime might set off long processes that can go on for many years. But this concept also means that the law should distinguish between “hate crimes” in which animus against a group rather than a person was the motivation and “anger crimes” in which the aggressor’s motivation was to harm a particular individual. That would mean that punishing a criminal additionally for, say, shouting a racial epithet in the heat of a fight would not be considered a hate crime.It’s essential for the sake of justice that hate crimes be defined objectively rather than making it a hate crime for, say, a white person to “punch down” at a black but not for a black person to “punch up” at a white. Violence motivated by animus toward a racial group should be punished equally no matter who punches whom.This, however, is considered a highly controversial point of view by the ACLU.If the goal of hate crime legislation is not merely to punch up at whites but to deter crimes that increase society’s overall level of racial animosity, then interracial hate hoaxes should be punished especially hard."
This is why liberals hate the police so much - because they investigate instead of credulously believing whatever supports the liberal narrative

Final defendant in Facebook hate crime case sentenced to 7 years - "Tesfaye Cooper, 20, like his three co-defendants, had faced more than 50 felony counts following his arrest in the kidnapping and assault case that captured national attention in the weeks following President Donald Trump’s election victory.Video of Cooper and co-defendant Jordan Hill taunting and hitting their victim –– a white teen who was a former classmate of Hill’s at a suburban alternative high school –– was live-streamed on Facebook and became the subject of frenzied internet debate... Hill cuts the victim’s clothes and hair with a knife, nicking his scalp. Among the taunts shouted at him were orders to say “I love black people” and “F— Trump.” Later, prosecutors said the teen was forced to drink water from a toilet bowl and lick the floor."
Too bad they didn't do something truly horrific, like being white and "smirking" at a "minority"

Southaven man who reported racist graffiti on vehicles charged with insurance fraud - "A Mississippi man was charged with insurance fraud after he reported racist graffiti had been spray-painted on two of his vehicles... His pickup truck has two N****** spray-painted on it. A car was painted with the phrase 'Leave N******' and 'Trump.'Foster was taken into custody Friday and charged with insurance fraud and tampering with evidence, but Southaven police stopped short of explicitly saying Foster was responsible for the graffiti... he painted his wife's car after it was spray-painted."

Nation's Liberals Devastated After Learning Hate Crime Didn't Actually Happen | The Babylon Bee - "“I needed this to be true,” said liberal columnist Hanna Spalding. “When I first heard the news of this attack, I was filled with so much hope. I felt so validated. Then that was taken away. Now I just want to cry into my pillow.”The attack had been called “a modern-day lynching” by democratic presidential candidate Cory Booker but after Chicago police reported that the “trajectory of the investigation” into Smollet’s story had shifted, Smollet was stripped of his victim status. Booker became irate, phoning the Chicago police chief and shouting repeatedly, “Check it again! CHECK IT AGAIN!” After some deep breathing exercises, Booker spoke with reporters. “How are we supposed to intentionally turn the nation against each other and exploit these divisions for political power if people won’t commit a simple hate crime once in a while?”"

A Medical Dean Sees a Fishing Knot and Calls it a Hate Crime - "What happens at the University of Michigan Medical School when an employee practices making fishing knots with surgical rope and the knot is found? The dean of the medical school, Dr. Marschall Runge, jumped to the conclusion that the knot was a noose; a hate crime had occurred... Even after the University of Michigan police investigated the incident and discovered the innocent nature of the knot, Runge was unapologetic. While admitting the incident was innocent, Runge claimed the fishing knot “has affected the entire community, and many experienced intense emotional reactions.”... If Runge decides his error means the University of Michigan needs to spend more money combatting bias he will probably face little opposition. Mark Perry, an economics professor at the University of Michigan at Flint calculated in 2018 that the University of Michigan “has nearly 100 diversity administrators, more than 25 of them earning over $100,000 a year.” Perry estimated the budget of those administrators at about $11 million annually.When your career depends upon finding bias, you will probably find bias. The more bias you find, the more successful you will be – you’ll need to hire still more diversity administrators – and as you do, you will get promoted up the diversity administrator ranks.Few will be brave enough to object to the growing expenditures; and if they do, the objectors will be accused of bias. Dean Runge could have used his mistake as a teaching opportunity about confirmation bias."

Universities Are Too Often Serving As “Hate-Crime Hoax” Mills. - "Advocacy groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center make headlines by claiming that hate crimes have surged since Trump’s election, but the real surge is in hate-crime hoaxes, especially among university students... They all point to a sickness in American society, with our institutions of higher education too often doubling as “hate-hoax mills,” encouraged by a bloated grievance industry in the form of diversity administrators.At Oberlin College, in particular, this problem precedes the Trump era... With their preoccupation with identity, privilege, and oppression, our institutions of higher education increasingly promote a paranoid climate of perpetual crisis. Is it surprising, then, that participants in this hothouse environment would respond to an incentive structure that rewards victimhood by manufacturing it?"

Girl says she made up story of white classmates cutting her dreadlocks - "A 12-year-old girl who previously claimed that three white classmates cut off her dreadlocks in a bullying incident at a Virginia private school now says she made up the story... The African-American girl alleged at the time that her classmates called her “ugly” during the attack... The girl’s tale captured international headlines and prompted the school to refer the case to police last Thursday.Investigators later reviewed security footage from the playground and did not see the events the girl described... The story bears a striking similarity to one that played out in Toronto early last year, when an 11-year-old girl claimed that her hijab had been cut by scissors... Last week’s incident captured additional attention because U.S. Vice President Mike Pence‘s wife, Karen, teaches at the school."
On Facebook, people who had questioned the veracity of the alleged assault were called racist, naturally. On the NYT Facebook many people were claiming she'd been pressured into recanting - just as there were people claiming the Chicago Police fabricated evidence that Jussie Smollett faked his hate crime

Maxim Lott on Twitter - "Black Virginia Girl Says White Classmates Cut Her Dreadlocks on Playground"
"Virginia Girl Recants Story of Boys Cutting Off Her Dreadlocks"
".@NYTimes removed race references from story after it turned out to be a hoax"

Jussie Smollett Claps Back at Derrick Jaxn Over Dreadlock Girl Comparison - "Jussie Smollett reacted angrily on Monday when self-help social media star Derrick Jaxn likened him to a 12-year-old who falsely claimed her dreadlocks were hacked off by three white classmates."

Why we keep falling for hate-crime hoaxes - "12-year-old Amari Allen appeared on television to share how she had been brutalized by racist white boys at Immanuel Christian School in Springfield, Virginia. The sixth-grader, who is black, wept as she recalled how she was pinned down during recess, had her arms pulled behind her back and had a hand placed over her mouth so she couldn’t scream.She said the boys cut off her dreadlocks, calling it “nappy.”... When the story first broke, left-wing politicians and activists raged. Rep. Rashida Tlaib published a personalized message on Twitter to the girl: “You see, Amari, you may not feel it now but you have a power that threatens their core. I can’t wait to watch you use it and thrive.” On Twitter, some even found a way to blame the Trump administration, noting ominously that Vice President Mike Pence’s wife, Karen, teaches art part-time at the school.As with Jussie Smollett’s original accusations, Allen’s yarn had all the elements of a rage-bait story. Fervid media interest turned a regional non-incident into a national crisis, featured prominently and uncritically on televised reports from NBC, MSNBC, CNN and CBS, in addition to numerous print and online outlets.Left-wing activists and the mainstream media refuse to learn lessons about hate-crime hoaxes. Sensational claims deserve additional scrutiny. Was Allen or her family asked why no known students had come forward to corroborate her claims? She said it happened during recess — around dozens of other students presumably.The accused boys were also never sought for comment. On the contrary, the NAACP demanded “immediate disciplinary action” against the minor suspects.It’s hard to blame the public and media consumers for their naive credulity. The real problem is that highly publicized fake hate crimes like this one usually receive little public coverage after it is revealed that the original accusation was a hoax.Then, too, few Americans are aware that in just the past few years, several children have been caught fabricating hate-crime allegations.In January 2017, police in Gambrills, Maryland, identified a “14-year-old black female” as the suspect responsible for sending out a violent racist threat against her high school using a Twitter account pretending to be part of the Ku Klux Klan.The following month, students at Plano West Senior High in Texas discovered their school vandalized with racist, anti-black graffiti all over its buildings and school vans. After several months, police arrested and charged Alexandria Monet Butler and Elizabeth Joy Police, two black female minors, for the incident. They were caught on camera vandalizing the school. Then last year, a 5-year-old black child in Grand Rapids, Michigan, launched a frenzied police search after she told her family that a white man in the neighborhood had urinated on her and called her a racist slur. A 60-year-old man was arrested. The child made up the story with her friends.Nor are incidents like these confined to the United States. In early 2018, Khawlah Noman, an 11-year-old Muslim girl in Toronto, claimed that a man had attacked her by cutting her hijab. The story reverberated across the country, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau immediately issuing comments condemning Islamophobia in Canada. Local police invested huge resources into catching the at-large suspect. Noman had fabricated the incident. She was never charged.The Boy Who Cried Wolf is as old as time immemorial, to be sure. What’s different today is the mind-boggling credulity of mainstream media and politicians, who jump to ideological conclusions and dial the outrage to 11 before the facts have played out.It’s no surprise that children lie, but when they are rewarded by an all-too-willing media and audience, we should expect more incidents like what happened in Virginia. The final result: Americans are bound to become ever more cynical and skeptical of hate-crime allegations — even when they’re true."

Smollett to Cops: Not My Fault You Spent So Much - "Jussie Smollett's legal team says "it's ridiculous and a stretch" to make him pay Chicago $130,000 to cover the cost of the police investigation into his alleged attack in January, reports the Chicago Sun-Times. "The filing of a police report, in and of itself, does not necessitate a sprawling investigation nor does it, as a practical matter, usually result in an investigation as extensive as the one CPD chose to undertake in this case," William J. Quinlan writes in a 12-page motion asking to have a city lawsuit against Smollett thrown out, per the Chicago Tribune. In other words, it was the city's decision, not Smollett's, to spend so much."
Of course, if they hadn't spent so much this would've been proof of racism

'Nerd' and 'geek' insults should be classed as hate crimes, academic claims - "Psychology lecturer and psychotherapist Dr Sonja Falck said the "divisive and humiliating" anti-IQ terms are hate crime's "last taboo". Dr Falck, who also runs a Harley-Street psychotherapy practice warned that the harmful words should be categorised in the same way as homophobic, racial, and religious slurs are under UK hate speech legislation... Her research has now been published in her new book 'Extreme Intelligence'.   Speaking at the book launch, she said the next Government must take legislative action to force societal change.  She said: "The N-word was common parlance in the UK until at least the 1960s.  "Other insulting slurs about age, disability, religion and gender identity remained in widespread use until relatively recently.  "Society at the time turned a blind eye to their impact by passing them off as harmless banter."
Due to the slippery slope, there will never be a "last taboo"

RIP Beto on Twitter - "A pair of Indian-American boys attacked African-American girls in New Jersey. According to a NYT op-ed, that was "enacting American whiteness," proves that "whiteness evolves" & race is not a matter of "blood or the color of our our skin."
"On "A Racist Attack Shows How Whiteness Evolves"

Dwayne Grayson Hate Crime Charges Withdrawn for ‘Restorative Justice’ - "Charges against a 20-year-old man who was accused of a hate crime in connection with the beating of an elderly Asian victim were withdrawn as part of a “restorative justice” effort by prosecutors in the case. San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin made the decision on March 2 in the case against Dwayne Grayson, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.Boudin, who was described in a Jacobin profile last year as a “socialist and the child of revolutionaries,” campaigned heavily on a progressive vision of criminal justice reform during the district attorney race... One of the men in the video is seen attacking the victim with a broom.At one point, the man filming shouted “I hate Asians!”Several of the people in the video appeared to mock the victim as he wept... Authorities said Amerson had robbed the same victim two months before the attack that was captured on video."
Hate crimes are only bad when they're committed by white people