Atlanta spa shootings put spotlight on Georgia's hate crime law The shooting deaths of eight people, including six Asian women, in the Atlanta area have put renewed focus on Georgia’s hate crime law. Authorities have not designated the Tuesday killings a hate crime, but said the label is still on the table. Cherokee County Sheriff’s Department officials drew criticism Wednesday for stating that the shooter told them the attacks, at three spas, were not racially motivated. The killings came amid an increased focus on violence against Asian American communities, and the FBI is involved in the case. Megan Varner/Getty Images Rep. Chuck Efstration, a state legislator who sponsored the bill in 2019 and helped push for its passage the following summer, said the killing of Ahmaud Arbery inspired some legislators to change their position and support the bill after it had stalled in the state Senate. Arbery, an unarmed 25- year-old Black man, was killed by a group of white men while jogging in February 2020. Arrests were not made in the case until a video of the shooting went viral and drew public outrage over law enforcement's failure to file any charges. More than two months after Arbery’s death, the men — including a former police officer — were arrested for murder. Related: Atlanta police say hate crime charges still possible for spa killings: 'Our investigation is looking at everything' A Republican representing an area northeast of Atlanta, Efstration told Yahoo News that hate crimes in the state were already tracked on police reports but that the legislation allowed prosecutors to seek the legal classification for a sentencing enhancement if they deemed an action as being motivated by bias. A person could not be charged with a hate crime separately, but a district attorney could file a notice before the arraignment that they were seeking an enhanced penalty. If the person was convicted, then the same jury could consider a harsher sentence if they felt the action also qualified as a hate crime. The hate crime classification would also be taken into consideration by parole boards. “There are certain crimes that are particularly heinous in nature where an individual or a group of people are targeted because of who they are,” Efstration said, “and those types of criminal offenses don’t only impact the victim, they impact all of society.” The new law went into effect on July 1, 2020, shortly after being signed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg via Getty Images Prior to the law's passage, Georgia was one of just four states without a hate crime statute on the books, after a 2000 law had been struck down as “unconstitutionally vague” by the state Supreme Court in 2004. The initial bill included the ability to seek stiffer penalties for crimes motivated by a bias against a person’s race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender or disability. In August, Kemp signed another bill into law that extended similar protections to police,a move opposed by civil rights groups. The provision was originally in the hate crime bill but was taken out and repurposed as a separate piece of legislation. How does the law go from being signed into effect by the governor to being put into practice by police departments and prosecutors? A number of organizations in the state handle the training and take questions from law enforcement officials, from police departments up to district attorneys, but training is not directly mandated by the state. Chris Wigginton, director of the Georgia Public Safety Training Center, told Yahoo News that state laws usually go into effect at the beginning of January or July, giving his organization time to flood agencies of all sizes across the state with the latest information. The center adds the new laws to the curriculum for recruits while also creating a legal update online class that’s available to officers. “In Georgia, there’s a requirement of 20 hours annually that has to be taught [to officers] — five of those are required hours that are set forth by the state, the other 15 hours are electives that they can take,” Wigginton said. While the legal update is not a required class, Wigginton said, the center has been pushing to get it added as a class that every officer in the state is required to take annually. “I think we will be able to hopefully get it added by the end of this year or next year,” he said. Wigginton said the current minimum mandatory requirements are one hour of requalification with a firearm, one hour on use of force, one hour on deescalation training and two hours of community policing, which include several topics from which to choose. He added that though the legal update course isn't mandatory, he believes the number of officers who take it annually is “very, very high.” “When we send it to the agencies, we send it to the training officer and normally the agency head, and they do a pretty good job at that point at distribution, and that prompts them to go to our online platform and look at it there as well,” Wigginton said. “The last thing you want to do as an officer is make an arrest based on something that the law has changed and you’re not knowledgeable on. That’s something we push pretty aggressively.” Chris Aluka Berry for The Washington Post via Getty Images Wigginton’s group works in conjunction with the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, which handles advising the state’s lawyers on new legislation. Peter Skandalakis, its executive director, told Yahoo News that while training on the law isn’t technically mandatory, lawyers in the state can be disbarred for not taking 12 hours of continued education each year, for which his organization’s training sessions qualify. “We immediately send those new laws out to all the prosecutors,” Skandalakis said. “We then follow up with a session in which we’ll sit down at our two conferences in the summer and winter and we go over all the new laws that the Legislature passed and the governor signed.” Skandalakis added that this year has been a little different because of COVID-19. “We still gave a law update through webinars,” he said, “so we advised them that the new statute had passed last year and [has] gone into effect. We go over the law and what the elements are. We’re a resource so if anyone runs into a situation where there’s a new law and they’re really not sure about it, they contact us and we walk them through that.” Skandalakis said he was not aware of the hate crime designation being used in a state case yet, but noted that due to the pandemic, jury trials are only just resuming after a long shutdown. He added that his organization also trains law enforcement but that he wasn’t aware of any training specific to the hate crime law. “When you have a statute like this, that’s pretty clear on its face and has the elements you have to prove and the method you go about proving it, it’s typical we won’t train on it by itself,” Skandalakis said. “We might put it in with how to select a jury if you might have this issue come up. We might combine it with that, but typically we’ve been able to get this out to prosecutors in a pretty good manner.” Megan Varner/Getty Images Nelly Miles, public affairs director for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, told Yahoo News that individual agencies are responsible for seeking out training, but that they have been submitting reports on hate crimes to the GBI. “Law enforcement agencies were already required to report hate crimes even though there wasn’t a state law,” Miles said, “so we’ve been receiving reports from law enforcement agencies based on the requirements to submit those bias reports. That would be something that’s important for the FBI, so what this new state law did is [provide] more detailed information and additional categories that have been outlined.” ____ Read more from Yahoo News: How March 11, 2020, marked the start of the COVID era He helped Trump bring American hostages home. Now he's working for Biden. One year after Breonna Taylor's death, her mother still wants 'real justice'Will voters reward Democrats for their stimulus bill?
All three spas are listed on Rubmaps, an erotic review site that allows users to search for and review illicit massage parlors. The site is the most popular of its kind, where buyers who call themselves “hobbyists” or “ mongers” looking for sex go to find and share information A review for Gold Spa on March 9 indicated that it was “full service,” as did a similar review from five days prior. A review for Aromatherapy Spa on March 2 also indicated sex was on the service list.
你妈站街你是不是应该把她毙了？ 【 在 scalife (scalife) 的大作中提到: 】 : 美国人不是傻瓜，看看USA today报道： : All three spas are listed on Rubmaps, an erotic review site that allows : users to search for and review illicit massage parlors. The site is the most : popular of its kind, where buyers who call themselves “hobbyists” or “: mongers” looking for sex go to find and share information : A review for Gold Spa on March 9 indicated that it was “full service,” as : did a similar review from five days prior. A review for Aromatherapy Spa on : March 2 also indicated sex was on the service list.
亚特兰大光头警察发言人最荒谬地方是：他给出的不认为是hate crime的理由是凶手告诉他说不是基于种族仇恨。原来凶手说啥就是啥啊？凶手说他没啥人是不是也可以当场无罪释放？
现场的亚裔目击证人据报道说凶手在当时大喊杀光亚洲人。这个证据警方就不会采用。说明警方宁愿相信白人凶手也不采信亚裔证人。警方认为白人凶手credibility更高。
Atlanta spa shootings put spotlight on Georgia's hate crime law
The shooting deaths of eight people, including six Asian women, in the
Atlanta area have put renewed focus on Georgia’s hate crime law.
Authorities have not designated the Tuesday killings a hate crime, but said the label is still on the table. Cherokee County Sheriff’s Department
officials drew criticism Wednesday for stating that the shooter told them
the attacks, at three spas, were not racially motivated. The killings came
amid an increased focus on violence against Asian American communities, and the FBI is involved in the case.
Megan Varner/Getty Images
Rep. Chuck Efstration, a state legislator who sponsored the bill in 2019 and helped push for its passage the following summer, said the killing of
Ahmaud Arbery inspired some legislators to change their position and support the bill after it had stalled in the state Senate. Arbery, an unarmed 25-
year-old Black man, was killed by a group of white men while jogging in
February 2020. Arrests were not made in the case until a video of the
shooting went viral and drew public outrage over law enforcement's failure
to file any charges. More than two months after Arbery’s death, the men — including a former police officer — were arrested for murder.
Related: Atlanta police say hate crime charges still possible for spa
killings: 'Our investigation is looking at everything'
A Republican representing an area northeast of Atlanta, Efstration told
Yahoo News that hate crimes in the state were already tracked on police
reports but that the legislation allowed prosecutors to seek the legal
classification for a sentencing enhancement if they deemed an action as
being motivated by bias. A person could not be charged with a hate crime
separately, but a district attorney could file a notice before the
arraignment that they were seeking an enhanced penalty. If the person was
convicted, then the same jury could consider a harsher sentence if they felt the action also qualified as a hate crime. The hate crime classification
would also be taken into consideration by parole boards.
“There are certain crimes that are particularly heinous in nature where an individual or a group of people are targeted because of who they are,”
Efstration said, “and those types of criminal offenses don’t only impact
the victim, they impact all of society.”
The new law went into effect on July 1, 2020, shortly after being signed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp.
Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Prior to the law's passage, Georgia was one of just four states without a
hate crime statute on the books, after a 2000 law had been struck down as “unconstitutionally vague” by the state Supreme Court in 2004. The initial
bill included the ability to seek stiffer penalties for crimes motivated by a bias against a person’s race, color, religion, national origin, sex,
sexual orientation, gender or disability. In August, Kemp signed another
bill into law that extended similar protections to police,a move opposed by civil rights groups. The provision was originally in the hate crime bill but was taken out and repurposed as a separate piece of legislation.
How does the law go from being signed into effect by the governor to being
put into practice by police departments and prosecutors? A number of
organizations in the state handle the training and take questions from law
enforcement officials, from police departments up to district attorneys, but training is not directly mandated by the state.
Chris Wigginton, director of the Georgia Public Safety Training Center, told Yahoo News that state laws usually go into effect at the beginning of
January or July, giving his organization time to flood agencies of all sizes across the state with the latest information. The center adds the new laws to the curriculum for recruits while also creating a legal update online
class that’s available to officers.
“In Georgia, there’s a requirement of 20 hours annually that has to be
taught [to officers] — five of those are required hours that are set forth by the state, the other 15 hours are electives that they can take,”
Wigginton said.
While the legal update is not a required class, Wigginton said, the center
has been pushing to get it added as a class that every officer in the state is required to take annually. “I think we will be able to hopefully get it added by the end of this year or next year,” he said.
Wigginton said the current minimum mandatory requirements are one hour of
requalification with a firearm, one hour on use of force, one hour on
deescalation training and two hours of community policing, which include
several topics from which to choose. He added that though the legal update
course isn't mandatory, he believes the number of officers who take it
annually is “very, very high.”
“When we send it to the agencies, we send it to the training officer and
normally the agency head, and they do a pretty good job at that point at
distribution, and that prompts them to go to our online platform and look at it there as well,” Wigginton said. “The last thing you want to do as an
officer is make an arrest based on something that the law has changed and
you’re not knowledgeable on. That’s something we push pretty aggressively.”
Chris Aluka Berry for The Washington Post via Getty Images
Wigginton’s group works in conjunction with the Prosecuting Attorneys’
Council of Georgia, which handles advising the state’s lawyers on new
legislation. Peter Skandalakis, its executive director, told Yahoo News that while training on the law isn’t technically mandatory, lawyers in the
state can be disbarred for not taking 12 hours of continued education each
year, for which his organization’s training sessions qualify.
“We immediately send those new laws out to all the prosecutors,”
Skandalakis said. “We then follow up with a session in which we’ll sit
down at our two conferences in the summer and winter and we go over all the new laws that the Legislature passed and the governor signed.”
Skandalakis added that this year has been a little different because of
COVID-19. “We still gave a law update through webinars,” he said, “so we advised them that the new statute had passed last year and [has] gone into
effect. We go over the law and what the elements are. We’re a resource so
if anyone runs into a situation where there’s a new law and they’re really not sure about it, they contact us and we walk them through that.”
Skandalakis said he was not aware of the hate crime designation being used
in a state case yet, but noted that due to the pandemic, jury trials are
only just resuming after a long shutdown. He added that his organization
also trains law enforcement but that he wasn’t aware of any training
specific to the hate crime law.
“When you have a statute like this, that’s pretty clear on its face and
has the elements you have to prove and the method you go about proving it,
it’s typical we won’t train on it by itself,” Skandalakis said. “We
might put it in with how to select a jury if you might have this issue come up. We might combine it with that, but typically we’ve been able to get
this out to prosecutors in a pretty good manner.”
Megan Varner/Getty Images
Nelly Miles, public affairs director for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, told Yahoo News that individual agencies are responsible for seeking out
training, but that they have been submitting reports on hate crimes to the
GBI.
“Law enforcement agencies were already required to report hate crimes even though there wasn’t a state law,” Miles said, “so we’ve been receiving
reports from law enforcement agencies based on the requirements to submit
those bias reports. That would be something that’s important for the FBI,
so what this new state law did is [provide] more detailed information and
additional categories that have been outlined.”
____
Read more from Yahoo News:
How March 11, 2020, marked the start of the COVID era
He helped Trump bring American hostages home. Now he's working for Biden.
One year after Breonna Taylor's death, her mother still wants 'real justice'Will voters reward Democrats for their stimulus bill?
你对白人疮粪警察还有幻想？
【 在 toddler (toad) 的大作中提到: 】
: 亚特兰大光头警察发言人最荒谬地方是：他给出的不认为是hate crime的理由是凶手告
: 诉他说不是基于种族仇恨。原来凶手说啥就是啥啊？凶手说他没啥人是不是也可以当场
: 无罪释放？
: 现场的亚裔目击证人据报道说凶手在当时大喊杀光亚洲人。这个证据警方就不会采用。
: 说明警方宁愿相信白人凶手也不采信亚裔证人。警方认为白人凶手credibility更高。
不觉得警察说的荒谬, 就是性瘾，localdisk它妈就经常接21岁的客
--黄疮localdisk
【 在 toddler (toad) 的大作中提到: 】
: 标 题: 亚特兰大警察发言人最荒唐的是否认hate crime理由
: 发信站: BBS 未名空间站 (Fri Mar 19 17:05:09 2021, 美东)
:
: 亚特兰大光头警察发言人最荒谬地方是：他给出的不认为是hate crime的理由是凶手告
: 诉他说不是基于种族仇恨。原来凶手说啥就是啥啊？凶手说他没啥人是不是也可以当场
: 无罪释放？
:
: 现场的亚裔目击证人据报道说凶手在当时大喊杀光亚洲人。这个证据警方就不会采用。
: 说明警方宁愿相信白人凶手也不采信亚裔证人。警方认为白人凶手credibility更高。
:
: --
: ☆ 发自 iPhone 买买提 1.24.11
: --
你不要在黄皮疮身上浪费时间
那群畜生都是土鳖国的监狱五毛，它们巴不得美化死光了呢。
死黄皮疮才是好黄皮疮
【 在 NikkiGiovani (temp) 的大作中提到: 】
: 不觉得警察说的荒谬, 就是性瘾，localdisk它妈就经常接21岁的客
: --黄疮localdisk
美国人不是傻瓜，看看USA today报道：
All three spas are listed on Rubmaps, an erotic review site that allows
users to search for and review illicit massage parlors. The site is the most popular of its kind, where buyers who call themselves “hobbyists” or “
mongers” looking for sex go to find and share information
A review for Gold Spa on March 9 indicated that it was “full service,” as did a similar review from five days prior. A review for Aromatherapy Spa on March 2 also indicated sex was on the service list.
以后婊子川粉选共和党，就是猪，需要自裁写天下。
婊子养的土鳖猪放出病毒，祸害美华，也需要千刀万剐。
你妈站街你是不是应该把她毙了？
【 在 scalife (scalife) 的大作中提到: 】
: 美国人不是傻瓜，看看USA today报道：
: All three spas are listed on Rubmaps, an erotic review site that allows
: users to search for and review illicit massage parlors. The site is the
most
: popular of its kind, where buyers who call themselves “hobbyists” or “: mongers” looking for sex go to find and share information
: A review for Gold Spa on March 9 indicated that it was “full service,”
as
: did a similar review from five days prior. A review for Aromatherapy Spa
on
: March 2 also indicated sex was on the service list.
同意这个！
【在 toddler(toad)的大作中提到：】
：亚特兰大光头警察发言人最荒谬地方是：他给出的不认为是hate crime的理由是凶手告诉他说不是基于种族仇恨。原来凶手说啥就是啥啊？凶手说他没啥人是不是也可以当场无罪释放？
：