{"id":138878,"date":"2014-09-04T17:10:30","date_gmt":"2014-09-04T17:10:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=138878"},"modified":"2014-09-04T17:10:30","modified_gmt":"2014-09-04T17:10:30","slug":"speaking-ill-police-hate-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/speaking-ill-police-hate-crime\/","title":{"rendered":"Speaking Ill of the Police is a \u201cHate Crime\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

William Norman Grigg
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

The NYPD has now added its name to the roster of Officially Protected Victims\u00a0by filing \u201chate crimes\u201d charges against 36-year-old Rosella Best<\/a>, who had tagged police vehicles and a public school with anti-NYPD graffiti. Among the entirely defensible sentiments inscribed by Best are \u201cNYPD pick on the harmless,\u201d \u201cNYPD pick on the innocent,\u201d and \u2013 in a display of familiar but increasingly justified hyperbole \u2013 \u201cNAZIS=NYPD.\u201d (Assuming that Ms. Best used only \u201cpublic\u201d property as her canvas, it\u2019s difficult to identify an actual victim in this case.)<\/p>\n

Like other agencies of its kind, the NYPD is well-stocked with the kind of privileged bullies who have mastered the art of simultaneously swaggering and simpering. Thus anonymous sources\u00a0described the graffiti to the New York Post<\/a>\u00a0as \u201ca disturbing hate crime.\u201d After Best was identified through video surveillance, the department arrested her and charged her with \u201ccriminal mischief as a hate crime.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under Article 485 of New York Penal Law<\/a>, a \u201chate crime\u201d must involve \u201cviolence, intimidation [or] destruction of property\u201d inspired by animus toward people on the basis of \u201crace, color, national origin, ancestry. gender, religion, religious practice, age, disability, or sexual orientation.\u201d Absent from that inventory is any mention of occupation as a \u201cprotected category,\u201d which means that the NYPD must consider itself to be either a tribe, a cult, or perhaps even a sexual orientation, most likely one that fetishizes sadistic mistreatment of the helpless.<\/p>\n

The statute also specifies that the offending act must be intended to \u201cinflict on victims incalculable physical and emotional damage\u201d and be intended to \u201cintimidate and disrupt entire communities\u2026.\u201d By filing a hate crimes charge against Ms. Best, the NYPD is certifying that its rank and file consists of people who are wounded and intimidated by public criticism. If the bold and valiant badasses of the NYPD must be protected from words, they\u2019re obviously ill-suited to protect the public, as if that noble calling were part of their actual job description.<\/p>\n

An addendum:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI think you made a mistake,\u201d comments LRC reader Jose Roberto Blum. \u201cNYPD officers are no tribe or cult, but they do have a disability. Or isn\u2019t `lacking a basic moral sense\u2019 or, more simply, psychopathy, a disability?\u201d<\/p>\n

The answer to that question is situational: In seeking \u201cspecially protected\u201d status, psychopathy would be a disability; for purposes of recruitment, it would be a prerequisite. By way of contrast,\u00a0a higher-than-average IQ<\/a>, or\u00a0a functioning conscience<\/a>, would be regarded as a liability.<\/p>\n

This piece<\/a> was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

William Norman Grigg The NYPD has now added its name to the roster of Officially Protected Victims\u00a0by filing \u201chate crimes\u201d charges against 36-year-old Rosella Best, who had tagged police vehicles and a public school with anti-NYPD graffiti. Among the entirely defensible sentiments inscribed by Best are \u201cNYPD pick on the harmless,\u201d \u201cNYPD pick on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":121049,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-138878","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}