“This is no place for this type of disregard for humanity in our society.”
Police in
Detroit have opened an investigation into a possible hate crime after a
man posted a video on social media showing him pulling a gun on a man
he seemed to believe was gay and hurling homophobic slurs.
Detroit police spokesman Michael Woody said Thursday
that authorities have made contact with the victim and are working with
him to identify the suspect. He added that investigators have leads in
the case but have not yet made an arrest.
“It’s
very troubling to think that somebody could be so brazen to point a gun
at somebody’s face,” he told The Washington Post, “and think police are
going to sit idly by.”
In the 32-second video, which was posted Tuesday
night on Twitter by the user @binswanson, a man in a car outside a
liquor store on Detroit’s west side pointed a gun at another man who was
walking by the shop.
“Hey, take your motherf—— pants off,” the man said in the video,according to Fox affiliate WJBK. “Man, get the f— on before I bust your a–.”
No shots were fired.
A
day later, the social media user, who made his Twitter account private,
bragged in Periscope videos that he was the man who pulled the weapon.
“Give
me my props,” he said, adding: “I wasn’t telling the n—– to take his
f—— pants off right then and there because, if he would have, he would
have been shot. Period.”
People on social media called the suspect’s actions ignorantand embarrassi
The suspect reportedly replied to his critics, telling them, “I don’t give a f— about none of that s— y’all saying I hate gay n—— save that s—.”
Woody,
the police spokesman, said that “all the elements are there for a hate
crime” but that the prosecutor’s office will be responsible for
determining the official charges.
“It’s
unfortunate that, in these times, you know — with all the things that
are going on in our nation — that even on social media we just cannot
seem to find even the slightest bit of decency,” he told CBS affiliate WWJ.
“The intolerance that we are seeing today in this nation is just
unacceptable, and we need to really come together to try and figure out a
way to do better.”
The
incident occurred the same day Detroit Police Chief James Craig and
Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy announced a new program called
the Fair Michigan Justice Project designed to help authorities
investigate crimes against the LGBT community, according to the Detroit Free Press.
“We’ve
been tracking the LGBT cases in my office for quite awhile when I
noticed a national trend ticking upward and even in Wayne County and in
the state of Michigan,” Worthy said, according to the newspaper.
The most recent report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics shows
that in 2012, there were nearly 300,000 violent and property hate crime
victimizations in the United States. Although that number is similar to
previous years, the percentage of incidents involving
violence increased from 78 percent in 2004 to 90 percent in 2011 and
2012, according to the data.
The
data also showed that motivations for hate crimes notably changed
— focusing more on victims’ ethnicity, religion and gender than
prior years.
Dana
Nessel, president of Fair Michigan, the gay-rights group that launched
the new crime-fighting initiate, spoke out about this week’s incident.
“This
video is a tragic reminder of the fear and intimidation LGBT people in
our community live with, on a daily basis,” she said in a statement to
WJBK. “It is the reason the Fair Michigan Justice Project was initiated
and it perfectly illustrates the importance of building a coalition
between law enforcement and the LGBT community.”
LGBT
Detroit, a nonprofit group that advocates for the city’s lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transgender community, told The Post that it was
“horrified.”
“LGBT
Detroit is horrified at the viral video footage of an innocent man
being violently threatened with a firearm and hateful slurs,” the group
said in a statement. “Hateful displays like this toward the LGBTQ
community continue to cause terror and harm to those in the community.
We urge all stakeholders in this city that we love, this state, and this
country to work to rid the prevalence of hate toward the LGBTQ
community. We also encourage residents and city officials to stand
against violence and hold those who cause emotional and physical harm to
the most marginalized residents accountable.
“This is no place for this type of disregard for humanity in our society.”
https://www.washingtonpost.
https://www.washingtonpost.
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