{"id":1147,"date":"2008-01-29T22:52:15","date_gmt":"2008-01-30T03:52:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/1147"},"modified":"2008-01-29T22:52:15","modified_gmt":"2008-01-30T03:52:15","slug":"why-statistics-on-hate-crimes-against-sexual-minorities-cant-be-trusted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/1147","title":{"rendered":"Why Statistics On Hate Crimes Against Sexual Minorities Can&#8217;t Be Trusted"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Especially here in Baltimore&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/wjz.com\/local\/pamela.brown.hate.2.636503.html\"><strong>Woman: I Was Attacked For Being Transgendered<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>On her way to buy some orange juice, 26-year-old Pamela Brown, who started living as a woman three years ago, said she was viciously attacked because she is transgendered.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I saw five guys blocking the storeway.&nbsp; They called me a [expletive deleted] and then I was hit.&nbsp; Then I was attacked by two more guys from the back and my fiance ran over,&quot; she said.&nbsp; &quot;I probably could have been killed if I was by myself.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Brown is now recovering while in protective police custody.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, two young men have been arrested near the Old Town Mall in Baltimore where the beating occurred.<\/p>\n<p>Police commented on the attack last week.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;More than likely it will be upgraded to a hate crime, simply because of the things that were being said,&quot; said Troy Harris, Baltimore City Police spokesperson.<\/p>\n<p>But now the city state&#8217;s attorney&#8217;s office is not pursuing hate crime charges. Why?<\/p>\n<p>A spokesperson says while there was provocative language, it is free speech and there&#8217;s no evidence of premeditation.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Dig it.&nbsp; If you&#8217;re gay or transgendered here in Baltimore, and someone walks up and beats the crap out of you while calling you a fucking faggot, that&#8217;s not a hate crime here in Baltimore, because the fact that they used sexual slurs while they were beating the crap out of you isn&#8217;t evidence of either hate or premeditation, merely one citizen&#8217;s opinion of another.<\/p>\n<p>This actually isn&#8217;t the only kind of crime Baltimore city chronically under reports.&nbsp; And Baltimore probably isn&#8217;t alone in that regard either.&nbsp; But check out the link I have on the right to the Baltimore Crime blog every now and then to see just how infrequently the violent criminals around here actually get the attention they need.&nbsp; Between our police department, which as been known to threaten victims for reporting crimes, and Patricia Jessamy, our pathetic state&#8217;s attorney who drops charges more frequently then a blizzard drops snowflakes, a lot of stuff around just gets swept under the rug, or dropped somewhere they hope nobody will notice.&nbsp; Which is all to say that it isn&#8217;t necessarily prejudice that&#8217;s motivating Patricia to under report hate crimes against sexual minorities here in Baltimore.&nbsp; More likely then not it&#8217;s just standard operating procedure.<\/p>\n<p>But now some of Baltimore&#8217;s black ministers are gearing up to wage <em>Kultur Krieg<\/em> on Maryland&#8217;s gay community over same sex marriage&#8230;so expect Patricia to be classifying more violent crimes against gay and transgendered people as freedom of speech in the coming months.&nbsp; Hopefully my family and friends won&#8217;t be seeing my name in that roll call.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Especially here in Baltimore&#8230; Woman: I Was Attacked For Being Transgendered On her way to buy some orange juice, 26-year-old Pamela Brown, who started living as a woman three years ago, said she was viciously attacked because she is transgendered. &quot;I saw five guys blocking the storeway.&nbsp; They called me a [expletive deleted] and then [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,49,12],"class_list":["post-1147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-anti-gay-violence","tag-crime-and-violence","tag-the-struggle-for-our-lives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}