NBJC CONDEMNS MURDER OF BLACK GAY YOUTH
19-year-old Found Hacked to Death in Brooklyn and
30-year-old Murderer of Sakia Gunn Accepts Plea Bargain
WASHINGTON, DC (March 10, 2005) – The National Black Justice Coalition (NBJC), the nation’s Black gay civil rights organization, mourns the death of Rashawn Brazell, a 19-year-old Brooklyn resident whose body was grotesquely hacked apart and found in several pieces across Brooklyn last month. Investigators have not classified the Brazell murder as a hate crime and are still searching for a suspect.
February 17, a transit authority maintenance worker found two legs and an arm stuffed in a bloody plastic bag jammed against the tunnel wall of a subway track in Brooklyn.
An aspiring Web designer who lived on Gates Avenue in Bedford Stuyvesant with his parents, the young man left on the morning of Valentine’s Day, ostensibly for a meeting with a tax preparer and never returned.
Investigators have not classified the Brazell murder as a hate crime and are still searching for a suspect.
Last week, the killer of 15-year-old Newark teen Sakia Gunn, was allowed to plead down from a murder charge to aggravated manslaughter, aggravated assault and bias intimidation. Richard McCullough was charged with the 2003 stabbing death of Gunn as she and a 17-year-old friend waited for a bus after spending the evening hanging out in Greenwich Village. McCullough had made unwelcome passes. The girls responded that they were lesbians and not interested, which prompted the men to begin hurling homophobic insults. The argument escalated and McCullough grabbed one of the girls around the neck, he said. McCullough stabbed Gunn once in the chest when she came to the girl's defense.
“The perpetrators of violent anti-gay hate crimes seek to divide us from the American family,” said NBJC Strategic Director H. Alexander Robinson. “These terrorist want to send a message to society that devalues our lives. We must reject their message of hate and send a clear message of our own. Congress and our nation’s legislators must ensure that all state and federal hate crimes laws protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.”
“It’s unfortunate and sad that these types of crimes occur,” commented Sonya Shields, New York board member of NBJC. “However, it’s important that like the deaths of Matthew Shepard and Brandon Teena, that we talk about this in our communities and began to look at and address the issues that contributed to these deaths, including homophobia.”
According to a report released in November by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, antagonism toward a particular race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity/national origin, or physical or mental disability prompted crimes against 9,100 victims during 2003. Hate Crime Statistics, 2003, showed that all but 4 of the incidents were classified as single-bias (involving only one bias motivation). A breakdown of the single-bias incidents by the type of bias revealed that 51.4 percent were motivated by racial bigotry and 16.6 percent were the result of a sexual-orientation bias. Among the 14 bias-motivated murders reported by law enforcement, 6 homicides were committed because of a sexual-orientation bias and 5 were the result of racial prejudice.
Forty-seven states and the District of Columbia have laws against hate crimes. Of those, twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia have hate crimes statutes that specifically cover crimes based on the real or perceived sexual orientation of the victim. Seven of those states and the District of Columbia also cover gender identity.
About the National Black Justice Coalition
The National Black Justice Coalition is a civil rights organization of Black lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and our allies dedicated to fostering equality by fighting racism and homophobia. The Coalition advocates for social justice by educating and mobilizing opinion leaders, including elected officials, clergy, and media, with a focus on Black communities.
Posted by bernie at March 11, 2005 2:40 PMTrackBack