Judge’s son charged with spray-painting ‘Trump’ and racist graffiti

[struggle4progress]

Published at 9:55 PM EDT on Mar 14, 2016

One of the students at Northwestern University charged with spray-painting racist, homophobic graffiti and Donald Trump's name at an Illinois chapel is the son of the chief justice of the Massachusetts Appeals Court.

Matthew Kafker, a freshman in college, was charged with institutional vandalism, criminal damage to property, and hate crime in a church after defacing Alice Millar Chapel on Friday with Anthony Morales, another freshman at Northwestern ...

Governor Charlie Baker appointed Scott L. Kafker last year to be the chief justice for the state appeals court ...

http://www.necn.com/news/new-england/-Judges-Son-Charged-in-Racist-Graffiti-at-Church-372056742.html

[cleanhippie]

1. What's the point of posting this story in the Religion Group?

Seems to be a trend forming here, s4p.

[struggle4progress]

3. "hate crime in a church"

[whatthehey]

4. I'm struggling with that part

The bigoted graffiti could be a hate crime sure, but is a hate crime so because it's situated in a church or directed at one? The latter seems not to be the case; the former seems to be a silly modifier.

[cleanhippie]

5. Hate crimes take place every Sunday in churches. Have you heard what's preached in many of them?

But this incident doesn't appear to be directed AT the church or it's parishoners, so calling it a "hate crime" seems a bit of a stretch, don't ya think?

Of course you don't.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. But the Religion group is the correct place to post those

and we do, even if we only post a small proportion of them.

Calling it a church is incorrect; it's a multi-religious chapel, and some of it was directed at individual students there:

The damage occurred early Friday at the university’s nondenominational Alice Millar Chapel in Evanston, Ill., a suburb of Chicago. The vandalism included the spray-painting of “an expletive and a slur against African-Americans with a swastika on the chapel hallway” and “a derogatory word for homosexuals on a wall,” the Tribune reports. There were also “lines spray-painted over photos of Muslim students,” according to the paper, plus images of penises in various places, including on a piano. And in a stairwell, there was the word “Trump.”

http://www.advocate.com/crime/2016/3/14/students-accused-painting-penises-swastika-and-trump-chapel

[Sanity Claws]

2. Republican governor

therefore he appointed a Republican judge.

Based on that, I think that the kid just acted out the stuff he heard at home and the rest of his privileged environment for all of his formative years.