Teens who spray-painted swastikas, racial slurs sentenced to learn about the Holocaust

[depakid]

Source: The Oregonian

Two 18-year-old men who went on a rampage in Troutdale -- spray-painting swastikas, KKKs and racial slurs on two churches, tombstones in the Jewish section of a cemetery and parked cars -- were sentenced to jail terms of 30 to 90 days Tuesday. Both Timothy Charles Feininger and Brendan Scott Mackey pleaded guilty in Multnomah County Circuit Court to first-degree intimidation, criminal mischief and burglary. Mackey also pleaded guilty to recklessly endangering another person because he threw rocks at passing cars.

Oregon sentencing guidelines recommend at least 18 months in prison for the teens, but prosecutor Don Rees said that in reaching a plea agreement his office took in consideration their age, their lack of criminal history, the remorse they've expressed and input from victims, who hope that an education about the history of hate crimes was worth a try.

Both teens will be required to spend time with a docent at the Oregon Holocaust Memorial at Washington Park. Also tentatively in the works are plans for Feininger and Mackey to visit the Oregon Jewish Museum and possibly attend meetings of a hate crimes coalition under the oversight of a Portland State University professor.

<snip>

Judge Henry Kantor sentenced sentenced Feininger to 160 hours of scraping fliers off utility poles and 90 days in jail, and because he has already spent nearly four months in jail, he was to be released shortly after Tuesday's hearing. The judge sentenced Mackey to 80 hours of flier removal and 30 days in jail, in what amounts to roughly a two-month sentence because of the time he spent in jail after his arrest. The teens also received three years of probation. They are not allowed to associate with each other, must write apology letters and pay for repairs and cleaning.


Read more: http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/06/teens_who_spraypainted_swastik.html

[Ian David]

1. I think we should just tattoo their graffiti on their face. n/t

[dorkulon]

3. You mean like this?

Yeah, probably not the best idea.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

9. Is that first one real?

Is it?

Really?

[dorkulon]

12. Yup

http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2007/08/23/face-of-hate-curtis-allgier-explained/

[Tangerine LaBamba]

15. Thank you .......

A cop-killer, no less.

How wrong does someone have to go to end up like that? And he has a wife?

Man, they are out there.

The things I find at DU every damn day never cease to amaze me.

Thanks again ..............

[dorkulon]

18. np /nt

[EndersDame]

5. Bad idea if they truly are repentent those tatts could get them in alot of trouble

[MrSlayer]

2. Like that will do anything more than amuse them.

This is a bullshit punishment.

[EndersDame]

4. It would be better than letting them hang out with serious Hate Groups in Prison

I actually knew a guy who considered me and my boyfriend good friends. Not much news execpt I am brown and the other guy had an Aryan Brotherhood tattoo on his arm. He got it when he was 15 and very dumb.He is actually saving up to get it removed. I thik these guys deserve a little bit of slack and alot of education and monitoring

[depakid]

7. From what one can tell, the above posters seem to express the very disease that they rail against

[lindisfarne]

6. I'd also sentence them to scrubbing whatever they spray painted until the spray paint

is removed (no using chemicals other than soap).

[EndersDame]

8. I agree and make financial reperations

[Tangerine LaBamba]

10. What I find most amusing and righteous

about this matter is that the judge is probably Jewish.........

[nomorenomore08]

11. Sentenced to LEARN??? OMG!!!TORTURE!!!

:rofl:

[Karenina]

13. Make them read Anne Frank's Diary

"Kidnap" them separately Ami style, send them to Germany and give them each a tour of several camps. Return them home and let them then compare notes. Were *I* the goddess in charge... :evilgrin:

[Hawkeye-X]

14. Make him watch every Holocaust story from the Shoah library

That should be in the agenda.

[Libertas1776]

16. that'll learn them...

seriously, do you think these little punks will learn their lesson. This almost reminds me of a video I saw on one of those caught on camera shows, where these young pricks actually filmed themselves shooting frozen paintballs in drive by shootings at random people on the street (don't get me wrong, in no way am I trying to equate this crime to the one at hand because there is no comparison) They were laughing and cursing as people writhed on the ground in pain thinking they got shot. Of course they didn't get away with as they were caught red handed by the cops. It was great when you saw the black and white cop car in the corner of the camera and them trying to hide the camera. Anyway, during the trial, the bastards lawyers had the defendants visit a museum of tolerance and take sensitivity training. They had video of them saying how "sorry" they were and how they had seen the error of their ways, oh barf!

Thankfully the judge was a taken no bull shit kind of guy and berated the defendants and their shyster lawyers lame attempt at making amends. Needless to say, he sentenced them to hard time. I say do the same for these little pricks.

[depakid]

19. Seems to me, that you have the very disease

Maybe it's not a curable one- but if not curable, at least quarateenable.

And the place sensible folks will start is with garbage like you just wrote.

[EndersDame]

20. My old downstairs neighbor had an Aryan Brotherhood Tattoo

He got it when he was 15 and very dumb.He has since then grown up and is saving up to get it removed.He considers my boyfriend and I his friends (i Am brown not the usual choice for someone with that tatt) I think these kids and yes kids should not be locked up with real hard core hate groups .I think they should be given a little bit of slack and alot of education and monitoring.

If they were to do something similar they should have the book thrown at them

[lindisfarne]

21. Cheaper to tattoo black ink over it (laser removal isn't very effective). Use

the kind that is more easily dissolved, in case we later get better at removing the standard nondissolvable ink.

[Rage for Order]

17. One more reason I'm glad I don't live in the North

I don't think I could bear the pervasive racism.


Racsim...it's not just for Southerners anymore :puke:

[depakid]

23. As the saying goes- there's more than one way to skin a cat...

Never really did understand that saying, either- but on this issue, top down approaches are effective, too as the Southern Poverty Law Center taught us here:

http://www.splcenter.org/legal/docket/files.jsp?cdrID=11

Bottom line of course is to treat racism as we would with any disease- go after the source, and attempt to inoculate the community.

Otherwise, we end up with more systemic problems, as we've see with towns like http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-texas-profiling_wittmar10,0,6051682.story">Tehana and http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/09/26/60minutes/main575291.shtml">Tulia.

[provis99]

24. Southerners are more racist by far than Northerners.

So I don't really get your point.

[Rage for Order]

25. My post was intended to be sarcastic

I was poking fun at those on this board who correlate bigoted behavior with certain regions of the country. Opinions of that nature are ill-informed and have at their root the very thing the poster claims to decry. Given the bigoted nature of your post, i.e. "Southerners are more racist by far than Northerners", it saddens me to have to point out this article to you:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090618/ap_on_re_us/us_parking_lot_noose_attack

MOUNT VERNON, Ohio – A central Ohio teenager accused of putting a noose around a Hispanic boy's neck and dragging him in a parking lot has been sentenced to 10 days in jail.

The 18-year-old was sentenced Wednesday in juvenile court in Mount Vernon, a city of 15,000 residents an hour's drive northeast of Columbus. He dropped his original plea of not guilty and pleaded no contest to ethnic intimidation.

A charge of aggravated menacing was dropped.

Seventeen-year-old Robert Cantu says in May 2008 he was dragged from a sidewalk to a parking lot with the noose wrapped around his neck by a group of teenagers shouting racial slurs. He says the teens threatened to hang him before a bystander intervened.

[No Elephants]

26. Bigotry--it's not just for racists anymore.

[Dumak]

22. So many schools have little in the way of sensitivity training

I grew up in a 95% white, middle-class, politically moderate neighborhood. This is the extent of my sensitivity training over 3 years of junior high and 3 years of senior high:

Read/Viewed/Visited:

1. Light In The Forest (Native Americans)
2. A Raisin In The Sun (African Americans)
3. Diary of Ann Frank (Holocaust)
4. Hiroshima by John Hersey (warfare, nuclear bombs, Japanese - not required reading)
5. To Kill a Mocking Bird (African Americans)
6. Huckleberry Finn (African Americans)
7. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (Buddhism)
8. Johnny Got His Gun (warfare)
9. A field trip to a Black-owned restaurant (great barbecued ribs!)
10. A field trip to a Japanese restaurant

Other than Ann Frank, discussions were minimal

That's pretty much it - spread out over 6 long years. No open discussions about race relations at all. Nothing about human psychology. Pathetic.

[newspeak]

27. when I was in college history class

we were shown the actual film of the allies going into the camps. Almost half the class left because they could not stomach seeing the atrocities that had been committed. Maybe, these two should be forced to view every film of the allies liberating those camps-see the smiling faces of the Germans who lived near those camps who were transported in to help bury the bodies. Apparently these two young men are very ignorant of history, gullible and wish to identify with something-too bad their identifying with something that's monstrously wrong.