Just emphasizes that most racism is discrete. It’s mot usually someone literally walking around with a noose or having a keeping it white bumper sticker on a truck. I bet you this concerned citizen would easily try to explain away their response as not racist at all because they’re not racist.
I wonder what the penalty is for hating white people.
For sure the law will get struck down if it penalizes speech. You are allowed to call cops anything you want. That has already been litigated.
Hopefully the guy gets good representation in the form of the ACLU or someone similar. This is right up their alley.
looking forward to Trumpists becoming a protected class
This took place in 2016. The charges were dropped, and they didn’t change the law it seems.
It was a totally ridiculous charge, even just by looking at the text of the law.
That line is being blurred by police in Pennsylvania who are using the state’s hate crime statute called ethnic intimidation—defined as “malicious intention toward the race, color, religion or national origin of another individual or group of individuals”—against people who direct vitriol at them.
On Sept. 23, 2016, Robbie Sanderson, a 52-year-old Black man from North Carolina, was arrested for retail theft by in Crafton, a small town near Pittsburgh.
During the arrest, Sanderson called police “Nazis,” “skinheads” and “Gestapo,” according to an affidavit of probable cause filed by the Crafton Borough police.
For that, he was charged with a hate crime.
Calling you a “nazi”, “skinhead”, or “Gestapo” has nothing to do with your “race, color, religion or national origin”.
It’s a clear misapplication of the law, so it’s no surprise that it was dropped.
Another classy person in power. FFS
Okay, okay, Pennsylvania sucks. You guys convinced me. Woof.
Can’t they just shoot them? Why the half-measures?
I tried to tell y’all but nooooooo, I wasn’t being civil enough…
So this guy did nothing but say mean things about cops, with no specific threats, but the FBI started a surveillance campaign against him, then arrested him, and were ultimately unable to make any coherent case at all.
They basically arrested him because he was a black guy who owns guns, and encourages other black men to own guns.
I’m sure the NRA will have this guy’s back.
Of course it will! /s
If I recall correctly last year or the year before the NRA said nothing when the cops killed a legal carrying citizen.
This need of these women, at least so far it’s been women, to police behavior is just so strange.
So a couple of things game to mind when I saw this. This is a kid earning money by mowing lawns. I did this when I was young too and now I never see it. I’d be so happy to have some kid mow my lawn because I hate it. The neighbor that complained didn’t even talk to him.
How hard is it to go outside your home and say hey kid, that’s my lawn, can you stop or, in my case hand him ten dollars and ask him to finish the whole thing.
Glad the discourage kid feels more encouraged, now.
I saw that article today as well. Glad you posted it. Two things just kill me: 1) someone thought that a kid mowing “over the line” was worthy of a police call and 2) the police actually responded.
I mean, come one, are their police officer so fucking bored that they are going to respond? Dispatch should probably just tell them there is no law being broken and hang up.
Too bad we can’t hear the 911 call. The kid was probably laughing maniacally in the background while threatening a mow-down of anybody that dare curtail his lawn-mowing terror. Responding to such a call sounds completely justified.
Plus the caller probably complained about way more than simply mowing over the line, like working on a school day, because they forgot it’s summer or something.
As a former 12-year-old who grew up mowing lawns for cash over several summers in southeast Los Angeles, it’s a damn shame all the shit today’s kids have to go through just to do business.
It’s probably not all the kids, though, that have to go through all that shit. Just some of the kids.
Yea, not all the kids. A lot of today’s kids are stuck in internment camps.
Yeah I am not sure why they came out. A different article, I forget which one, said they were called by the same neighbor for a snowball fight.
On the plus side, it sounds like the police might have been encouraging when they talked to the kid… hopefully.
There are a lot of people, read mostly racist and bigoted people, who claim minority children, especially black boys, are “older than they are” which is not a… thing. It’s an 8 year old mowing a lawn. I can’ t imagine how someone would find that threatening in anyway. if they had insurance concerns, talk to the kid or the neighbor whose lawn he’s supposed to mow and get it cleared up.
Heck I’ve dealt with rude teens and never felt the need to call the cops. They’re just kids. Unless their threatening someone… what the hell.