Hate Crime Might Have Just Been Solved by Amateur Sleuths on Social Media

[Iceblink]

This story is quite fascinating. On Sept 11 two gay men were savagely beaten by a large group of people in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Yesterday, Philadelphia police released a surveillance video of the suspects fleeing the scene after the crime.




Greg Bennett, a guy on the other side of the U.S. in San Francisco, then tweeted the video of the crime. A friend of a friend of his sees the video and recognizes the people in the video and what they are wearing from a photo the person had just seen on Facebook and tweets the photo back to Greg Bennett.





A guy in New Jersey that goes by the twitter handle @FanSince09 then retweets Greg's tweet. People that see the retweet inform @FanSince09 that they recognize the restaurant as La Viola, an Italian restaurant in Philadelphia. Next, @FanSince09 goes to Facebook to see who has recently checked in at the restaurant and recognizes some of the people from the photograph, some of whom had gay slurs on their Facebook pages. He then calls the police and tells them what he has found. The lawyers of some of these people have now contacted police and are arranging to turn themselves in. Maybe it is just me, but I find fascinating that a crime might have been solved this way.


Although here is a reality check of what really matters here. This is the eye of one of the victims after the attack and one victim had to have his jaw wired. The pic shows how brutal this was. The group also stole a bag of one of the victims.



http://gawker.com/philly-hate-crime-susp...1635661609

https://storify.com/mkramer/how-twitter-...om-a-ppd-v

[Virge]

Ooooooooooooooooooooooo weeeeeeeeeeee.

I looked at the pic and the video paused at the same time to see if I could find the people! Heck yeah! They are the crowd!

Too bad for them. They are going down in a big way on this.

[Cuddly]

Ooooooooooooooooooooooo weeeeeeeeeeee.

I looked at the pic and the video paused at the same time to see if I could find the people! Heck yeah! They are the crowd!

Too bad for them. They are going down in a big way on this.

Serves them right! They can't just go around beating people!!

[deepu69]

Good use of social media. I hate prejudice.

[BlueStar]

I was wondering how long until such hatred would begin to fade a little...

Well at least social media did something reasonable for once.

[East]

OK...I haven't seen so many all white people in one place in my life. How does that happen? Don't they know any Asian or Black or Brown people?

We know they know a few gay people because the only people who beat up gay people are self hating closet cases.....

I know....weird observation...or maybe not......

[Iceblink]

I've been following this story today and so far no arrests have been made. One thing I did notice, even on local television news facebook pages that picked up this story, the comments have been almost unanimous finding this group of people of repugnant. I do not how many are familiar with local news facebook pages, but even in liberal areas NYC or San Francisco, most of the people making comments on those pages tend to skew very conservative. I think this incident was too much for even some anti-gay people.

[dynamodean]

Supposedly they were all alumni from a Catholic high school. Why am I not surprised that it's the Catholics performing hate crimes??

[Iceblink]

The story has gotten ridiculous. The group of 12, and it might be as high as 15, is now claiming it was self defense because they were the ones being attacked by the gay couple and they were just reacting with self defense. A ridiculous excuse for many reasons. First, this was 12 against two and these two guys were small. No one in the group of friends had any injuries of any kind, while the two men had severe injuries. It's ridiculous because the group stole a bag from one of the couple that contained his wallet and phone. Why part of self defense involves theft? It is ridiculous excuse because the beating stopped because the group saw cops approaching from down the street and so they fled. If they had been attacked and were practicing self defense, it would seem they would be happy to see the cops. This group of people is the worst of humanity.

There is some small justice here. One person in this group of friends was employed as a basketball coach for a local Catholic high school and has now been fired and barred from employment at any of the Catholic schools in that diocese.

[ceez]

we are still far far away from being able to walk down the street holding hands with our lover. there are some very sick people in this world, I hope they all get serious jail time.