teens live stream their torturing of bound and gagged trump supporter

[angus]

It's rather blurry and shaky, but I can clearly identify a guy with tape over his mouth, huddling in a corner.  I can also hear lots of anti-Trump shouts made in stereotypical black accents.

At the risk of being roundly chastised here, I have to wonder if it's a hoax.  If a group of people actually kidnapped, bound, gagged, and beat a person it wouldn't make sense for them to capture it on video and then post that video on a social medium such as Facebook.  Criminals get caught by doing stupid things, but those stupid things are usually accidental.  The filming and posting required some positive action, and one would assume that at some point during the posting it would occur to the poster that it's not a good idea to post it.

Okay, I found a longer version of the video, in case anyone is interested:  http://regated.com/2017/01/kidnapped-trump-supporter-tortured-by-chicago-thugs/

I guess I'm starting to think that it wasn't staged.  I've found Brittany Herring's facebook page and it suggests that she might not be the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree (or sharpest knife in the drawer, choose your favorite metaphor for vapid, incurious, or unintelligent).  It also suggests to me that she may spend a great deal of time under the influence of narcotics.  If you're really curious, take a look at the facebook page.  There's enough anger, frustration, and bigotry to go all around.  Something for everybody.  (warning:  not for the feint of heart)

Also, I totally agree with dead0man's comment about hate crimes.  I've long bitched about "hate" crimes on this forum and elsewhere.  If a black man is killed by a black man his life shouldn't have been considered any less valuable than if he had been killed by a white man, for example.  A crime is a crime if it's already a crime.  Spraypainting broken crosses on the tombstones at a Jewish cemetery, for example, is already a crime prosectuable under existing law.  What we should do is enforce existing law, not make up new ones just to make ourselves feel better.  Unfortunately sensationalism sells, and it helps career politicians get re-elected, so "hate crimes" are probably here to stay.

If these four people are found guilty of the allegations of kidnapping, verbal abuse, physical abuse, and, from what I could glean from the article, stealing a car, then they should be sentenced appropriately for those crimes regardless of their skin color or their political ideologies.

[angus]

Youngest is 18 years old.  Video has been removed from FB but you can watch the longer version from many sources.

One thing we probably should not forget is that everyone is, by law, presumed innocent until found guilty in a court of law by, if requested, a jury of his peers. 

This begs the question:  in this day of instant communication, is it really possible to find a truly unbiased, uninformed, unprejudiced jury of one's peers?  By custom, we would all need to excuse ourselves from the jury pool, because we have all already either tried and convicted these young people, or we have excused them and dismissed the case according to some rationale involving Donald Trump's rudeness during the campaign.  Once a story goes "viral" it seems like a difficult thing to guarantee a speedy and fair trial.

[angus]

All those arrested are facing a minimum sentence of 6 years in prison - ironically for aggravated kidnapping, not for the hate crime (which is the least severe charge they've received).

The rest of the post, though poorly written, makes sense, but this bit confounds me.  What irony could there possibly be in the fact that kidnapping is the greatest of crimes allegedly committed, and an aggravated one at that (meaning either that a ransom was demanded or that injury or physical risk to the victim occurred.)  Does the writer of this article not understand the meaning of the word?

Again, I think that they are all to be presumed innocent, but if found guilty, it seems to me that the kidnapping is first and foremost of their crimes, and should merit the most attention.