4 teenagers ranging in age from 16 to 18 face potential hate crime fees after being arrested for allegedly vandalizing Delight flags at Atlanta’s Rainbow Crosswalks.
In line with NBC Information, Atlanta police acquired calls round 1:40 a.m. Tuesday, reporting that the group of 4 allegedly tore down satisfaction flags from native institutions on Piedmont Avenue and tenth Avenue, a hub for the town’s LGBTQ neighborhood. “They’re in the course of the road popping wheelies, tearing up flags,” a person may be heard saying in the course of the 911 name.
They allegedly took the flags and started chopping them up with a knife on the intersection’s rainbow crosswalk, whereas additionally making the massive mind transfer to document video of themselves vandalizing the flags. They tried to flee the scene on motorized scooters earlier than the police ultimately apprehended them.
The alleged vandals had been two 18-year-olds, a 17-year-old, and a 16-year-old. In Georgia, 17-year-olds are robotically charged as adults. All 4 have been charged with obstruction, prison harm to property, conspiracy, and prowling. A quotation was additionally issued to the daddy of the 16-year-old for not supervising his baby. Police stated the 4 had coordinated the disruption and had pushed fairly a distance from their houses northwest of the town.
What’s going on with children nowadays, y’all?
After I was a teenage boy, getting as much as nonsense on a summer season night time concerned watching a midnight film, hanging out with women, perhaps even pulling an all-nighter, and operating the Halo 3 marketing campaign on Legendary with my greatest mates if we had been actually feeling loopy. We weren’t out right here harassing the LGBTQ neighborhood and probably getting charged with hate crimes.
“So far as it being labeled a hate crime, that’s nonetheless below investigation,” Atlanta police Sgt. Brandon Hayes stated Tuesday throughout a information convention. “We’re nonetheless taking a look at all avenues so far as how that cost will probably come about.”
Ought to or not it’s thought of a hate crime, a prosecutor might request harsher penalties corresponding to an extended jail sentence or a extra extreme superb. The legislation was enacted in 2020 following the homicide of Ahmaud Arbery, whose solely crime was jogging whereas Black.
Tenth St. and Piedmont Ave. has been one of many cornerstones of Atlanta’s LGBTQ neighborhood. It was the house of the Outwrite, the town’s first LGBTQ bookstore and coffeehouse. Atlanta’s Rainbow Crosswalks had been initially put in in 2015 for Delight month, however grew to become a everlasting set up in 2017 as a tribute to the 49 individuals who had been killed within the Pulse nightclub capturing. Sadly, this isn’t the primary occasion of vandalism within the space, as police arrested a person in 2022 for portray swastikas on the crosswalk.
The vandalism comes on the tail finish of one of many extra subdued Delight months lately. Because of the Trump administration’s campaign towards DEI and the LGBTQ neighborhood at massive, a number of Delight occasions confronted price range shortfalls after company sponsors pulled out, and retailers have pulled again from Delight shows in shops over worry of conservative outrage.
Including damage to insult, the Trump administration introduced this month that it might be shuttering the LGBTQ centered line of the nationwide Suicide and Disaster Lifeline. Trump even tried to drag congressionally permitted funds from non-profits centered on LGBTQ sexual well being by means of an government order, however a decide fortuitously blocked most of it attributable to unconstitutionally imprecise language.
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