What is a Racial Crime?
For a bias crime to be investigated properly, the beat police officer must decide whether the crime involves bias. Beat officers, with minimal training, must make tough decisions in very ambiguous situations. Which case from last year was deemed a racial crime by the Chicago Police Department’s Neighborhood Relations Division? A. On a warm May night, a white man drives into Chicago Lawn, an area of high racial tension. A 4-year-old black girl runs into the street. He hits his brakes, but she falls down, bruising her forehead. The driver gets out. The girl’s father and a friend, one of them reportedly shouting racial slurs, attack the driver, fracturing his skull. B. On Halloween, three black youths in Uptown pass some Vietnamese and Cambodian youths carrying eggs and warn the Asians not to throw eggs at them. They comply, but throw eggs at others. The blacks run to a store, where one pulls a gun and fires at the Asians. A Cambodian boy out trick-or-treating is hit in the chest. C. On t
