Four attackers break 72-year-old man’s jaw while shouting anti-gay slurs

Four attackers shouting anti-gay slurs beat a 72-year-old man on the street of Manhattan, breaking his jaw.

The police report stated that the attackers confronted the man at the corner of W. 17th St and Ninth Ave in Chelsea around 10:15 p.m. on September 15, the New York Daily News reported. They punched him, kicked him, and yelled, “What are you doing around here, you f**king f***ot?”

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“No one should be targeted simply for being themselves. It is cruel and unacceptable.”

The incident is being investigated by the New York Police Department’s Hate Crime Task Force. Photos of the suspects have been released and police are asking anyone with information to call Crime Stoppers at (800)577-TIPS or post an anonymous tip to their website.

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As the country inches closer to the 2024 presidential election, it is possible that there will be more crimes like this one. A national civil rights group has warned that hate crimes will likely spike during the election, just as they have during each of the last four presidential elections.

“From the mainstreaming of hate and the failure of social media platforms to adequately address disinformation, the current climate is rife with opportunities for the trend of increased hate to continue into the 2024 election,” stated the report from the Leadership Conference Education Fund (LCEF), “unless action is taken.”

LCEF has released a four-point plan to combat the predicted increase, including asking public officials to refrain from and speak out against hate speech; asking social media platforms to invest in content moderation teams to de-platform sources of hate; telling the federal government to confront and address white supremacist violence through existing civil rights infrastructure and not through federal anti-terrorism agencies, which have historically criminalized already marginalized communities; and calling on Congress to mandate hate crime data collection, requiring all law enforcement agencies to report such data to the DOJ or FBI. 

As of 2023, 32 U.S. states have laws requiring state and local legal agencies to report hate crime data to the FBI and DOJ; 18 states do not.