Margaret Cho has launched a Twitter tirade against the Philadelphia police department over the light sentences handed down this week for two of the three gay-bashers charged last year in a brutal street attack against a gay couple. Philly police responded that they don’t handle prosecutions. The exchange continued, with Cho complaining that there were no hate crimes charges and the police then informed her that no such law exists in Pennsylvania.
Unfortunately while Philly PD was right that they don;t handle prosecutions they were very wrong when they said that no Hate Crime laws exist in Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA is a member of this union & since hate crimes against LGBT people are illegal in the United States of America as of October 2009 therefore federal law hate crimes legislation applies.
Federal law banning hate crimes against LGBT people needs to be enforced in every state of this union in order to get federal funding and unless it it enforced it is useless.
And as for gay politico Brian Sims. there has been no word of his reaction to the very light pleas bargain deal. But there has been a lot of posts on his Facebook page about fundraising his upcoming run for Congress.
I agree with Margaret Cho that these plea bargains are B.S.
The more so that, the community service the two are getting is at an LGBT community center.
The LGBT community center should refuse to have these gay bashers on its premises, as they are dangerous anti-LGBT bigots. The agreements involving the pleas and the sentencing are only pieces of paper and in themselves do not stop these vicious monsters from acting out against additional LGBTers. The judge who allowed this is a fucking schmuck.
Did you consult with a lawyer before opining on the relevance of federal hate crime legislation in a local prosecution? Because you are wrong – federal legislation doesn’t apply in a state prosecution. Thus the need to continue to seek protections in each state. Not clear to me how a hate crimes statute would have helped here. There were already serious felony charges that were dropped as part of the plea bargain. And why no mention of Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams? He and his office are the people one should be complaining to.