Here’s Why It Matters That Officials Are Calling the Charleston Mass Shooting a Hate Crime

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Early Thursday morning, officials had already called the mass shooting and killing of nine people in a historic African American church in Charleston, South Carolina a hate crime. Both Charleston police Chief Greg Mullen and Mayor Joe Riley both labeled it a hate crime.

This matters because the FBI initiates a hate crime investigation when they get an allegation from a reliable source. This allows for a federal prosecution.

Once the FBI is investigating, while they can and do work with local forces, the investigation takes on a federal nature and this removes it from the local bias that can and does often exist in hate crimes.

The mass murder at Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church is a hate crime as defined by the FBI:

A hate crime is a traditional offense like murder, arson, or vandalism with an added element of bias. For the purposes of collecting statistics, Congress has defined a hate crime as a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation.” Hate itself is not a crime—and the FBI is mindful of protecting freedom of speech and other civil liberties.

Thus a hate crime is a special designation of committing a crime against another person motivated by a specific bias against them.

The 21 year old white male, identified as Dylann Roof, who shot and killed the nine people was actually in the church for an estimated hour as he attended a meeting with his victims before he shot and killed them, according to Charleston police Chief Greg Mullen.

He let one woman live so that she could tell people what happened according Charleston NAACP President Dot Scott who was speaking on CNN, which suggests the motive of terrorism to me. (The motive of intimidating a minority group from worshiping by mass shooting a targeted minority during a prayer session appears to be an act of terrorism in and of itself.)

One of the victims was Democratic state Senator and Pastor Clementa Pinckney. He was one of the youngest African-American in South Carolina to be elected to the State Legislature, he graduated Magna Cum Laude from Allen University, and he received a Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson Summer Research Fellowship in public policy and international affairs. He served in the state House for three years before being elected to state Senator. He served the 45th district of South Carolina, where he was born, an area with many who needed his services as someone who was committed to helping the impoverished.

But Pinckney was also well known for having spoken out about the shooting of an unarmed Walter Scott by police. Pinckney pushed legislation calling for body cameras for police officers. Now he has been murdered.

Having murdered a state senator — especially one who was pushing legislation on such a racially inflammatory and controversial issue as the Walter Scott shooting — also elevates this crime, into what looks to be terrorism to me, but has not been labeled as such yet. Terrorism is defined as the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political goals.

The FBI says investigating hate crimes is the number one priority of their civil rights division because groups that preach hatred and intolerance plant the seeds of terrorism, “Investigating hate crime is the number one priority of our Civil Rights Program. Why? Not only because hate crime has a devastating impact on families and communities, but also because groups that preach hatred and intolerance plant the seeds of terrorism here in our country.”

It is a good thing that this mass shooting has been quickly labeled a hate crime. It means that most likely it will be overseen federally and prosecuted federally. While it has every appearance of also being an act of terrorism, officials will need to find and interrogate the suspect first as well as investigate his motive.

Sadly our country has a habit of refusing to call certain acts of white mass murder as terrorism, even when it serves the purpose or would reasonably serve the purpose of fulfilling a “political” agenda.

Update: President Obama said the Attorney General has made it an official hate crime, the FBI is on the scene.

Sarah Jones

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