Ringside Seat: Lawmakers move to protect homeless
MILAN SIMONICH
Ringside Seat
Posted: Sunday, July 27, 2014 7:07 pm | Updated: 9:39 am, Mon Jul 28, 2014.
The ugly underbelly of life in New Mexico has not changed in 40 years.
In 1974, three students at Farmington High School were charged in the torture and murders of three Navajo men in Chokecherry Canyon. Perpetrators of this sort of violence against helpless or drunken men gave it the euphemistic name “Indian rolling,” as though bigotry, assault and murder were a sport.
This month, three teenagers in Albuquerque were arrested in the murders of two homeless men, attacked as they lay on a dirty mattress in an otherwise deserted lot.
The killers in Farmington ended up in reform school for two years, spared of a murder trial. Prosecutors will not be so lenient in moving against the defendants in Albuquerque.
State Sen. Bill O’Neill knows that occasional high-profile attacks on vagrants draw attention, then emotions cool and so does interest in protecting defenseless people. So he will reintroduce a bill to make attacks on homeless people a hate crime, thereby escalating the penalties.
Read more here: http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/ringside-seat-lawmakers-move-to-protect-homeless/article_4df8552e-4e68-5132-9b24-0bd78e3fb2d9.html