Federal officials at the DOJ are watching the Philadelphia Police Department’s investigation of the anti-gay hate attack by 12 twenty-somethings that landed two gay men in the hospital.
One week ago tonight twelve “preppy” and “clean cut” friends from Catholic school were leaving a local Philadelphia restaurant when several of them verbally and then physically assaulted a same-sex male couple.
“Is this your f***ing boyfriend?”
“Are you a dirty fag?”Â
Those were just two of the questions asked, before at least one of the men from the group of twelve threw a punch.
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Attorneys for the “persons of interest” who have yet to be arrested are claiming their clients — not the two men who were beaten so badly one will have his jaw wired shut for two months — are the victims, and acted in self defense.
While general consensus is the Philadelphia Police have responded quickly and thoroughly, it’s also a fact that the State of Pennsylvania chose to not include sexual orientation in their hate crimes legislation.
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That means that even if the perpetrators are arrested and prosecuted, there may not be sufficient resources to prosecute the case fully. Or, there may be underlying civil rights violations that need to be prosecuted by the federal, not state government.
Fortunately, federal officials “say they are aware of the case,” CBS News reports. “The FBI has been in touch with local authorities, but no decision has been made as of noon today.”
Typically, federal authorities will allow local authorities to do their inital investigation and gather as much information as they can to determine what happened, then federal authorities would make a decision based on that evidence — whether they should begin their own investigation.
And in this case, a federal investigation could probe possible federal hate crime violations. That would be determined based on the nature of the attack and things that were said during the attack.
Philadelphia Councilman Jim Kenney has sent a formal letter to the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Zane Memeger, asking the DOJ “to conduct an investigation and bring Federal charges against these individuals.”
“It is my opinion,” Councilman Kenney writes, “that it is in the interests of substantial justice for this Act to be enforced here, and the only true justice that can be meted out against these individuals is found in the penalty provisions” of the 2009 Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.
We’ll be keeping a close eye on this developing story — stay tuned.