Saturday, April 09, 2011

Fake hate crimes

On November 9, 2006, the O'Fallon Missouri Police Dept. received a warning purportedly from the KKK:
"Get all the blacks from Chevy Chase Apartments from out of O'Fallon before we burn the [w]hole complex down. KKK warning."
Today, the AP reports that a federal grand jury has indicted Justin Lamar Kidd, a 28-year old African-American formerly of O'Fallon, on two counts for sending this and another false threat. He was arrested on Wednesday.

Similarly, in 1996, Angela L. Jackson claimed that UPS employees wrote racist slurs on packages sent to her.
She filed a $572,000 lawsuit against UPS. But, the evidence showed otherwise and, instead of winning a jackpot, she was convicted and sent to prison for her fraud.

More examples of fake hate crimes can be found in a 1997 US News & World Report article and in The Psychology of Stalking: Clinical and Forensic Perspectives by J. Reid Meloy.

While genuine hate crimes are evil, the lesson here is that not all media-reported hate-crimes are real and it can take many years to sort out the facts.

Hat tip: GatewayPundit.

RELATED: On April 5, Quinn Matney, a freshman at the University of North Carolina, reported to campus police that he had been a victim of a vicious anti-gay hate crime that left him injured for life. He still appears to be injured for life but the campus police have determined that his hate crime report was false. Analysis is here and here. Hat tip Instapundit.

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