Does an assault on the English language constitute a hate crime?
It’s a relevant question – especially as Queens DA Richard Brown busies himself demonstrating the utter absurdity of New York’s hate-crimes law.
Brown last week charged Alexandra Gilmore, 36, and Rebecca Tharpe, 30, with second-degree grand larceny as a hate crime (among other charges) for swindling a 93-year-old Alzheimer’s patient out of nearly a million dollars.
Gilmore, posing as retired barber Artee McKoy’s daughter, allegedly took out credit cards in his name, twice refinanced a Bayside property he owned and sold his Jamaica home, using Tharpe as a “straw buyer.”
All told, the pair raked in some $800,000.
Despicable, yes.
But where’s the hate?
Not required, it turns out, under New York state law – which allows a “hate” charge merely if the crime is committed because of a “belief or perception” about a certain group. That perception being, in this case, that an elderly Alzheimer’s patient would make an easy mark.
In other words, this was clearly a crime of opportunity – and the law does common sense no favors by pretending otherwise.
Brown, to be sure, argues that the particular vulnerability of the elderly makes this kind of exploitation especially despicable.
That’s a fair point, so far as it goes – we’ve argued in the past for tougher punishments against those who attack the elderly, precisely for that reason.
But that’s a far, far cry from mislabeling such attacks as “hate” and punishing the perpetrators based on the beliefs they hold.
Prosecutors, after all, already have plenty of resources for bringing predators like Gilmore and Tharpe to justice, as the litany of non-hate charges – grand larceny, criminal possession of stolen property and identity theft among them – clearly shows.
Just as, one would hope, New Yorkers would have ample grounds to condemn their alleged crimes without resorting to the tendentious – and inapplicable – language of group victimhood.
At this rate, pretty soon everybody will be a member of some “stigmatized” group.
And the word “hate” will be meaningless.