Bizarre, Criminal law, Politics, Society

Chicago Mother and Children Attacked By Mob Allegedly Yelling Racial Slurs . . . Police Charge Case As Misdemeanor Property Offense

250px-municipal_flag_of_chicagosvgWe have been discussing the national debate over hate crime laws and the standard for investigating particular cases but not others as in the recent case out of Cincinnati. A new controversy has erupted in Chicago where a woman, Susan Pedersen, says that she was attacked in her car with her children in a black neighborhood by a mob yelling that she did not belong in the neighborhood. She is white. However, two alleged attackers were charged only with misdemeanor criminal damage to property. While the case has received relatively little attention and more details would be helpful, critics have charged that a black driver surrounded by a white mob in such a circumstance would have resulted in both a state and federal hate crime investigation. There is also a question of how the police and prosecutors have charged this case generally as a property damage case even without the alleged racist motivation of the mob.

The attack occurred near the University of Chicago where I went to school. The mother had just dropped a friend off at the University of Chicago when she stopped at a red light and found her car surrounded by several dozen young people. She says that they were yelling racial slurs about her being white and smashing her windows with the children screaming inside. The group even reportedly used a bicycle to smash the window when their fists did not suffice.

As I have mentioned in prior blogs, I often heard accounts of white students and family members entering into some nearby neighborhoods and being surrounded and even roughed up due to their race. One of my sisters and a friend once went into such a neighborhood by accident and two African-American officer pulled them over to tell them that they could not stay in the neighborhood because they would likely be targeted due to their race. Likewise, when I was in college, I drove off campus and was similarly confronted at a red light by about five men who told me to get out of the neighborhood and tried to open my door while calling me racial names. For the record, this was one of only a couple times that I have faced such racial anger and I would not attribute that conduct to the vast majority of neighborhoods with predominantly African-American populations.

There are obviously countervailing stories of African-Americans facing the same response in some white neighborhoods. Some of those cases have received national attention and resulted in hate crime prosecutions or special enforcement efforts.

The question is when such crimes should be defined as hate crimes if they are motivated by race. It is not clear why some cases are immediately characterized as possible race cases and subject to federal intervention while others are not. Conversely, some have criticized the hate crime laws more generally because of what is perceived as undefined standards in enforcement as well as the ability to charge crimes directly linked to the conduct like assault. The laws also raise free speech issues in some cases.

My greatest concern is that an attack on a mother and children in a car is viewed by the police and prosecutors as simply a misdemeanor property offense and not assault or other crimes. Even if this is not to be investigated as a hate crime, it was clearly an assault on this family if the account is true. Thus far, the police and prosecutors appear to be undercharging this offense as a purely property offense in my view. Even removing the race element, there is still a car with broken windows and a terrified family who merely appear to have driven down the wrong street. Of course, if there are additional facts that have not been reported like some traffic dispute or altercation, we should be told about it. If this mother’s account is true, the handling of the case seems deeply troubling.

Source: ABC

132 thoughts on “Chicago Mother and Children Attacked By Mob Allegedly Yelling Racial Slurs . . . Police Charge Case As Misdemeanor Property Offense”

  1. http://www.thenation.com/article/congressional-democrats-introduce-ambitious-new-bill-to-restore-the-voting-rights-act/

    “Two years ago, the Supreme Court gutted the VRA. Senator Patrick Leahy and Congressman John Lewis have a plan to fix that.

    Two years ago, on June 25, 2013, in Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court invalidated the centerpiece of the Voting Rights Act. Tomorrow, congressional Democrats will introduce an ambitious new bill that would restore the important voting-rights protections the Supreme Court struck down. The Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2015 would compel states with a well-documented history of recent voting discrimination to clear future voting changes with the federal government, require federal approval for voter ID laws, and outlaw new efforts to suppress the growing minority vote.

    The legislation will be formally introduced tomorrow by Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and leaders of the Black Caucus, Hispanic Caucus, and Asian Pacific American Caucus in the House. Civil-rights icon Representative John Lewis will be a co-sponsor. The bill is much stronger than the Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2014 (VRAA), Congress’s initial response to the Supreme Court’s decision, which garnered bipartisan support in the House but was not embraced by the congressional Republican leadership, which declined to schedule a hearing, let alone a vote, on the bill.”

    ******************
    This is REALITY. What Scott Walker says is laughable and should not be taken seriously.

  2. In what reality does one live to believe that Democrats back voter suppression laws?

    According to HuffPo a “nuanced” U of D poll shows 67% of Democrats support Voter ID laws when asked without framing.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-c-wilson/public-opinion-on-voter-i_b_1683873.html

    Politifact reports:

    http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2015/jun/29/scott-walker/scott-walker-says-most-americans-support-voter-id-/

    A Rasmussen Reports poll published June 3, 2015, showed 76 percent of respondents believe voters should be required to show a form of photo identification before being allowed to vote. Even 58 percent of respondents who identified as Democrats supported voter ID laws.

    So the answer is ‘this one”. But the better question is what reality do you live in?

  3. SteveF, did I indicate that criminals that attack others should be given a pass? I don’t believe I did. Steve actually my comments were in response to the comment at 11:33 AM. Then my subsequent comments were in response to Pogo. So I actually didn’t comment on this story at all until 12:51PM.

  4. In what reality does one live to believe that Democrats back voter suppression laws?

  5. I have frequently noted my disapproval of the entire idea of hate crimes legislation. This story, and the standard garbage observations strewn in its wake, further convince me of the correctness of my position. First, at the most fundamental level, every intentional interference with the personal or property rights of another is an act of hatred. When we attempt to classify certain types of wrongs as hate crimes, we are engaged in politicizing crime, thereby virtually guaranteeing miscarriages of justice.

    Second, the unlawful touching of another without the other’s consent is a battery. In determining whether a battery has occurred, the motives of the defendant are wholly immaterial. Evidence of animosity, racial prejudice or other aggravating factors should properly be considered only in connection with determining the penalty to be imposed for the crime. Moral outrage should be reserved for the sentencing phase and, ideally, expressed by a jury.

    Third, the effort to define categories of crime with reference to the personal views of the perpetrators creates the sort of nonsensical debate illustrated by the comments to this story, in which people engage in mindless comparisons and maintain victimization score cards.

    We undermine the rule of law when we depart from universal standards. And we mock the commitment to true diversity when we either make excuses for instances of wrongdoing or cite those instances to support our own ignorance and bigotry.

  6. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”
    — Alexis de Tocqueville

  7. I. Annie
    Obviously it did happen and obviously it was wrong.

    And yet your takeaway is that criticizing it means one believes there is a War on Whites.

    This incident doesn’t prove there is a War on Whites, does it?

    Since you’re the only person alleging someone believes it does how is this even relevant?

    No one but a few conservatives are fooled by what these voter suppression laws are trying to accomplish.

    A majority of democrats support Voter ID. Does it bother you you are so out of the mainstream you can’t even fathom what a majority of your own party think?

  8. I. Annie

    I am usually sympathetic to your posts, but you ignore the fundamentals on the column: A serious crime was committed and blacks appear to have attacked whites based on skin color.

    Instead you launched an attack on conservatives based on generalities.

    Justice should be color blind; just because there are idiots on the right doesn’t mean that racist criminals should get a pass.

  9. Uh huh. And there’s a family with a dead daughter in San Francisco, still waiting for a sympathy call from Obama.

  12. Rick, I wasn’t commenting on the story. Obviously it did happen and obviously it was wrong. Racism is always wrong. This incident doesn’t prove there is a War on Whites, does it? It proves there is still racial tension and denying blacks the fundamental right to vote hasn’t helped allieve the racial tension. No one but a few conservatives are fooled by what these voter suppression laws are trying to accomplish.

  13. I. Annie
    1, July 14, 2015 at 11:59 am
    Ah, the imaginary War on Whites,

    Yep, this story didn’t happen. It’s all imaginary.

    Which is pretty funny coming from someone referencing voter suppression laws.

  15. @Chief Consort

    Do you remember this recent one from Chicago:

    A New Poster Child for Black on White Crime

    Paige Stalker might be alive today had she learned about Routine Activity Theory.

    But she is dead and two of her friends are critically wounded, the latest poster children for R.A.T.: White people in black neighborhoods should expect to be the victims of racial violence.

    Paige was one of five teenagers from an upscale neighborhood in nearby Grosse Point who were on their way to the movies three days before Christmas when they decided to pull over and smoke marijuana in Detroit.

    While they were getting a high, a black man with a high-powered rifle approached their car and fired 30 rounds into it, killing Paige.

    Paige and her friends learned the hard way what in 2012 became well known in a Chicago courtroom. The case revolved around a white woman who was released from jail into a black neighborhood. Hours later, she was thrown out of the seventh-story window of a local housing project.

    Her parents sued the city of Chicago, saying the city should have known their white daughter would be a victim of violence in that black neighborhood.

    That was the testimony of Harvard sociology professor Robert Sampson and what the judge said when he described R.A.T. The woman “was a white female in a predominantly black, poor neighborhood (and) she had a much higher risk of predatory victimization.”

    The judge said the situation was so transparently dangerous (link corrected) that Chicago police “might as well have released her into the lions’ den at the Brookfield Zoo.”

    The city’s lawyers claimed the professor was guilty of racial profiling and demanded the judge throw out his testimony. Judge Frank Easterbrook scorned that argument and approved a judgment against the city for $22.5 million.

    http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/12/a_new_poster_child_for_black_on_white_crime_.html

    What is more likely is that most people have never heard of this, because it doesn’t fit the black victim narrative.

    Squeeky Fromm
    Girl Reporter

  16. @Detroit Guy

    Oh, I was busy outside raising up my Confederate flag, and saying prayers for Nathan Bedford Forrest, CSA.

    Anyway, this story about these feral blacks shows why we should all give up our guns. Because one of us mean white people might shoot some of these little Trayvons while they are innocently strolling about the neighborhood, and kindly teaching white people about the properties of concrete.

    The only good thing about these attacks is that they sometimes claim a race-baiting white Democrat as their victim, which is my idea of “social justice.”

    https://pansiesforplato.wordpress.com/2015/07/11/ccc-exploits-tragic-murder-of-democratic-political-operative-by-a-black-man/

    Squeeky Fromm
    Girl Reporter

  18. Ah, the imaginary War on Whites, the War on Males, just like the War on Christmas, lol. Always the victim, white males….

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