Chicago Police: Facebook Torture Video Probably Not A "Hate Crime" [This Conclusion Now Rejected]

[Ok, they changed their minds on this one to what seems like the saner conclusion.]
No, man...it was, like, a love crime...
   I've got objections to the category hate crimes. I'm not irrevocably convinced that it's a bad category, but I'm inclined to think that it is. And this certainly doesn't do anything to change my mind.
   Another thing to note here is that this is yet another clearly-recorded case of apparent violence against an alleged Trump voter qua Trump voter. This isn't some guys pushed me down but there were no witnesses and no injuries, and all I can tell you about them is that they clearly identified themselves as Trump supporters...
   Of course it's possible that these people are just evil, and they latched onto whatever they could think of, and you're white and you voted for Trump are what came to mind... I'm fairly sure that that sort of thing does happen. But: were the races reversed, would we be taking such distant possibilities seriously?
   Maybe the police have relevant information we don't.
   But it's a little hard to believe.
   Incidentally, it's that kind of semi-official double-standard that drives people crazy about this sort of thing. And I'm inclined to think that they're right to be mad about it. Even if you clearly recognize that group A is discriminated against and has it generally a lot worse than group B, I think you can think that overt double standards are wrong in many cases. That's one of the things that bugs me about the academic left, in fact, Obviously you're a lot better off in the U.S. being white than being black. But the academic left holds, roughly, that if anything you say can in any way be loosely interpreted by anyone as being in any way, to any degree anti-black, then you're a racist, Jack. On the other hand, it's permissible to build your career on arguing in print that whiteness is by definition evil. If you can doublethink double enough to think that double...well, you've slipped the surly bonds of consistency and touched the face of...uh...I dunno...Cthulhu or something... Sure, there are white racists running around out there who have equally double double-standards...and who do more actual harm...but: that's our standard? I'm going to have to demand a little more from the law, and from allegedly respectable academicians.
   Anyway: something analogous seems to threaten if four black people can torture a white guy while screaming that he is white and not fall under an extant "hate crimes" statute.
   Anyway, there's no reason to rush to judgment.