
Authorities arrested a 14-year-old white male student at Naperville High School in Naperville, Illinois, and charged him with committing a hate crime.
What the teen did was genuinely bad: He took a picture of a black classmate and posted a "slave for sale" ad on Craigslist. The school suspended him, and it was right to do so.
But now the police are involved, and the teen faces two felony hate crime charges as well as a misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge.
The teen was in court on Wednesday, according to the Chicago Tribune:
Prosecutors called the allegations "serious and aggravating," and said the alleged actions put the victim's safety at risk. The hate crime counts are juvenile felonies and the disorderly charge is a misdemeanor.
[Defense attorney Harry] Smith said the student is serving an in-school suspension and his client and the victim have a meeting scheduled before the school principal where the youth will formally apologize. Smith described the pair as friends.
State's Attorney Robert Berlin issued a statement Wednesday in which he called the allegations "beyond disturbing."
"Hate crimes have no place in our society and will not be tolerated in DuPage County," Berlin said. "Anyone, regardless of age, accused of such disgraceful actions will be charged accordingly."
For the authorities to charge someone with a hate crime, there must be an underling crime. Simply holding or expressing hateful views is not illegalindeed, it is protected by the First Amendment. Prosecutors can consider hate crime charges only when hate is the motivating factor in the commission of a crime, such as assault or vandalism.
Since disorderly conduct is the only other item here, the hate crime charges presumably stem from that. Disorderly conduct is often a broad category of offense, and such is certainly the case under Illinois law: "A person commits disorderly conduct when he or she knowingly does any act in such unreasonable matter as to alarm or disturb another and to provoke a breach of the peace." The disorderly conduct charge is a misdemeanor, but the hate crime charges are felonies, making this an extremely serious criminal matter for a 14-year-old kid.
I don't know what was going through his head when he posted the Craigslist adnews article suggest the two boys were former friendsand I do not object at all to the school itself taking punitive action. But should the cops really be arresting 14-year-olds, and subjecting them to life-derailing felony charges, for incidents of nonviolent bullying? School is supposed to teach young people to behave responsibly, not shuffle them into the criminal justice system at the first sign of trouble. This is far too harsh an outcome, and it shows one of the dangers of having hate crime laws on the books at all: They give cops more opportunities to overcharge.
#1: Lod To: Bill D Berger (#0)
Lod posted on 2019-11-23 10:42:43 Reply Private Reply
#2: BTP Holdings To: Bill D Berger (#0)
This sounds vaguely like those black's who kidnapped a retarded kid from NW suburbs of Chicago and brought him to the west side. They forced him to drink water from the toilet.
The kid escaped and was walking down the street. The cops picked him up and he told them what had happened.
He led them back to where he was held and the cops arrested them. The black's were all charged with kidnapping and a hate crime.
It was the right thing to do.
This episode does not sound even close to what was done to that retarded kid. ;)
BTP Holdings posted on 2019-11-23 11:54:10 Reply Private Reply
#3: GreyLmist To: BTP Holdings (#2)
GreyLmist posted on 2019-11-23 20:02:23 Reply Private Reply
#4: BTP Holdings To: GreyLmist (#3)
I am sure she might end up on a gang in the suburbs picking up litter alongside the road.
When I worked for State of Illinois, the black guys on the crew said, "Don't be picking up those beer bottles."
They would drink and drive and then piss in the bottles and throw them out the window. ROTFLOL
BTP Holdings posted on 2019-11-23 20:09:18 Reply Private Reply
#5: GreyLmist To: Bill D Berger, 4 (#0)
TRUMP: The President talks background checks, economy and China - YouTube, 18 minutes | Published on Aug 21, 2019 by FOX 10 Phoenix | Link set to start at 6:50 for a 70 second segment to 8:00, where he supports removing the age limit on gun control background checks to include juvenile records because of the alleged Dayton shooter's heinous juvenile criminality. Transcription at 7:40, "one of the things we're talking about is getting rid of the age limit. He was 17 so, when he turned 18, it was expunged. So we didn't find out about that. And a big percentage of the school, the parents wouldn't let their kids go to that school because they heard about it. Ok? It was a very big thing. When he was 18, it all went away. We can't let that happen."
GreyLmist posted on 2019-11-23 21:34:19 Reply Private Reply
#6: BTP Holdings To: GreyLmist (#5)
Just because someone turns the age of majority does not necessarily mean their attitudes may have also changed. These little foibles can reappear at any time and in any place. ;)
BTP Holdings posted on 2019-11-23 22:06:42 Reply Private Reply
#7: Dakmar To: GreyLmist (#5)
Dakmar posted on 2019-11-23 22:10:22 Reply Private Reply
#8: GreyLmist To: BTP Holdings (#4)
Hate crime - Wikipedia
The only mention at that Wikipedia site about Felony-level charges isn't about Hate Crime at all -- just for filing a flase police report about Hate Crime, like Jussie Smollett did.
Ms. B. Covington's sentence-penaltes don't appear to have been enhanced much by pleading guilty to the Hate Crime charge. Even if it was recorded as a Felony, Dem-Commiecrats would probably arrange it so she could still vote somehow for them.
GreyLmist posted on 2019-11-23 22:36:03 Reply Private Reply
#9: BTP Holdings To: GreyLmist (#8)
Yes indeed. And seeing as it was Chicago, the voter fraud machine is simply getting more grease. ;)
BTP Holdings posted on 2019-11-24 08:48:33 Reply Private Reply
#10: GreyLmist To: Dakmar, *Music Club* (#7)
Am almost certain that the objectives of forceful integration and pricey-housing subsidies for the poor are mainly to prohibit Caucasian Christians from being a community majority anywhere (schools, businesses, apartment buildings, the local grocery store, etc., etc.) -- not to integrate more racial and cultural varieties of people into neighborhoods of politicians, the super-rich, Chinatown of San Francisco or the Muslim community of Dearborn, Michigan, for instance; probably not ethno-religious communities of Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and so on either. Surely they wouldn't want any Blacks who complain of being oppressed just by the Whiteness of Caucasians to become a minority in their own communities of choice wherever they're a noticeable majority. [Ref. I'm not white I'm Jewish - unofficial MUSIC VIDEO - BibleRap rap hiphop | YouTube, 3.75 minutes]
GreyLmist posted on 2019-11-24 14:45:58 Reply Private Reply
#11: GreyLmist To: All (#10)
Re: Paragraph 1. Seems like a genocidal sort of plan, imo -- criminalizing people to refuse all of them quarters or to evict them, even when they're innocent, so as to make them homeless and maybe unemployable.
Re: Paragraph 2. The Children's Services Board in America also has ordinances, or whatever they call it, that separate families here with more children than affordable living space for each of them and their parent(s) or guardian(s) to have their own private rooms.
GreyLmist posted on 2019-11-24 15:38:14 Reply Private Reply