Federal authorities said Thursday they have arrested and charged a Texas man in connection with the “knockout game,” accusing him of a hate crime for targeting a black man for a vicious street attack.

Most knockout victims that have appeared in news reports have been white, but the Justice Department said in this instance the victim was a 79-year-old black man, and stepped in with federal charges.


“Suspected crimes of this nature will simply not be tolerated,” said Kenneth Magidson, the U.S. attorney for the southern district of Texas. “Evidence of hate crimes will be vigorously investigated and prosecuted with the assistance of all our partners to the fullest extent of the law.”

The Justice Department said it filed a criminal complaint against 27-year-old Conrad Alvin Barrett on Tuesday and arrested him on Thursday.

According to Justice officials, Mr. Barrett recorded himself on his cellphone attacking the 79-year-old man, laughing and saying “Knockout” as he runs away.

The 79-year-old man had his jaw broken in the Nov. 24 attack.

“The plan is to see if I were to hit a black person, would this be nationally televised?” Mr. Barrett says in the video, according to the authorities.

Knockout, in which someone decides to attack a random victim and tries to knock him or her out with one punch, has been in the news after a spate of assaults in recent weeks.



The “game” has spawned a fierce debate since many of the reported victims have been white and their assailants have been black, but hate crimes charges have been all but non-existent.

Last month New York authorities did charge one person with a hate crime, saying the assailant targeted a Jewish man.



Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/dec/26/federal-authorities...
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

Views: 199

Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

It illustrates how racists the current administration really is. From not prosecuting the Black Panthers who intimidated voters to all of the black "knockout" thugs who attacked whites. The message being sent is that black on white crimes are not racists and therefore deserve no particular attention other than local prosecution. I would hate to see what blacks would do if whites were in the minority.

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.”  The FBI further states its own definition:   "A hate crime is a traditional offense like murder, arson, or vandalism with an added element of bias."

Nobody is without some bias, including those who try to prosecute hate crimes. 

Chances are this thug chose the 79 year old because he was an easy target who couldn't fight back, is he thus committing a hate crime against the aged since he bypassed young black men to choose him as a target?  By his comment:  "The plan is to see if I were to hit a black person, would this be nationally televised?”  shows more that he is a pathetic individual in search of fame, conducting an experiment that, to his detriment, will probably land him in jail for longer than if he hit someone that looked like him.

DOJ Declares “Knock-Out Game” Attack a “Hate Crime”

The US Department of Justice charged Conrad Barrett of Katy, Texas with a “hate crime” for assaulting a 79-year-old Black man and fracturing his jaw. Barrett made a video of the attack in order to see if it would make the national news.

While there have been numerous other incidents of knock-out game assaults, a few resulting in fatalities, this is the first instance in which the DOJ has become involved. In the vast majority of these other incidents the perpetrators have been young Black males.

Attorney General Eric Holder insisted that these other incidents were “not analogous to what occurred in the Barrett case. A White man attacking a Black man is part of a 400-year pattern of racist abuse. The victim did nothing to warrant being bludgeoned by Barrett. The same cannot be said in these other cases. As victims of 400 years of racist abuse, the Black assailants have obvious cause for grievances against Whites. Therefore, their hate is justifiable and cannot serve as the basis for a criminal charge against these Black assailants.”

So a 27 year old white man whose great-great-great grandfather never owned a slave or knew anyone that did, is all part of a 400 year pattern of racist abuse?  The whole statement by Holder is nothing but racist, and against all codes of justice by declaring that Barrett is guilty of hate because of the AG's perception that even now we have white-on-black abuse caused by racism, while ignoring the actual recent FBI crime statistics to the contrary.

" The victim did nothing to warrant being bludgeoned by Barrett. The same cannot be said in these other cases."   So is Holder saying that every white person that lives has done something that warrants knock-out attacks against them, without similar retribution, if the assailant is black? 

Holder is an idiot. We can all see how blacks and liberals in power twist the law to fit their own agenda. This should scare everyone because revenge and retribution is the first thing on many black leaders minds.  100% of U.S. citizens currently in the Country have never owned a slave so where does that fool Holder get his information. And of course the liberal press goes right along with this insanity.

What Holder is preaching is another form of entitlement. They are saying that since their relatives were not treated fairly then they are exempt from any current laws that whites are obligated to follow and they feel they have an excuse to run a muck without having to suffer the consequences like white people.  This kind of reasoning is idiotic but they believe it.

     The "knockout game" has led to other assault charges before this one. However what elevates this incident to the level of hate crime is the video evidence of racial bigotry on Conrad Alvin Barrett's  phone. Barrett had videos stored on his phone which stated racial slurs, and audio where Barrett exclaimed, "the plan is to see if I were to hit a black person, would this be nationally televised?". This means that Barrett didn't know the victim, didn't care who the victim was, but only cared about the victims race.

     The "knockout game" has other cases of hate crime related assaults related to it as well. Marajh Amrit, a black male from Brooklyn, was arrested for assaulting a Jewish man, on the basis of the victim's religion. Allegedly, Amrit yelled out anti-Semitic comments towards the victim while he threw the punch. It's very heart breaking to know that this amount of racism exists today, but it's not the fault of any particular administration, local, state, or federal.  

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/26/justice/texas-knockout-charge/

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/cops-probe-attack-man...

 

If the worst thing Conrad said was "the plan is to see if I were to hit a black person, would this be nationally televised?", and this is the only thing that has been put out there, then this is not really a crime of hate.  And I would dare say the other incident you mention seems to be a stretch in indicating the striker had actual antagonism created by the victim just because of the fact he was Jewish. 

If our AG claims that a black on white crime cannot be a hate crime, but white on black crime is almost a hate crime by default, then either the Attorney General is incredibly stupid, or hate crimes are not fairly executable laws. 

A crime is a crime, and hate can be assigned to what is otherwise a senseless crime conducted for other sick thrills other than hate;  a court has some latitude to assign malice to the crime in making a sentence more strict.  Hate crimes are superfluous and contrary to traditional justice.

Racism, prejudice, suspicion, fear,  profiling, ect. are all defensive mechanism's built into our DNA. They have developed over millions of years of evolution and will never be eliminated from our make up. Humans must learn to overcome the battles inside in order to live peacefully amongst ourselves. Many Governments have been created out of racism, prejudice and fear and we are in the process of seeing one evolving before our eyes. I'm  speaking of the U.S. This current administration has done more race baiting and agitating than should be allowed. If anyone is paying attention they will have seen the level of racial tension increase tremendously from 2008 to the present despite the billions of dollars spent to help minorities and the back bending of whites to appease those  minorities. Has anyone noticed that we have a black President?  

RSS

© 2024   Created by XLFD.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service