Argumentative Essay: The Cause Of Hate Crimes

Doing something that you don’t regret, but is an unlawful act is what I think of when I hear or see the word crime. Crimes happen every day with various reasons behind the action. Recently within the last few weeks a major crime happened. A camera man on live TV filmed himself killing his two coworkers. This was a shocking reality for everyone. Not knowing what someone is capable of doing is quite scary. In this particular case if people would have took more of an interest in what was happening before the shooting occurred then they would have seen hints that a violent event might occur within the future. Flanagan who was the shooter was a gay black man who has been discriminated upon for the last few years. Not only by the people that did
not know him so well, but by the two coworkers Parker and Ward. Flanagan explained on paper why he had the motive to shoot them. Parker had made some racist comments to him and Flanagan did turn her in. No actions were taken and then had to still work together. Now for Ward there was no evidence of why he got killed. Around 6/17/15 a shooting in Charleston happened then within the next few days Flanagan went and put a down payment on a gun. On the day of the shooting Flanagan, then left the scene faxed a 23 page letter to the office stating various reasons why he committed this murder with the consideration that the church shooting was the breaking point for him. Now in 2013 Flanagan was fired from the station. The department felt that after a long series of having so many complaints on coworkers and never finding evidence of it being true, thy then had to let him go. They saw Flanagan as an unstable person. This heinous crime is considered to be a part 1 violent offense.
Pre meditated murder in this case was a long thought process of how and when the right time would be. But as going so far as to film it was beyond what sane people would do. Yes, years of horrible comments and jokes do take a toll on people, but the news station did not take the right action to the offenses being made. The part 1 offenses are usually committed by socially disadvantaged groups. Even though he acted alone still he has a sense of peer reject and an anti-social personality that occurred more over the last few years. The crime that occurred is considered a hate crime. One that is motivated to either damage, hurt, assault, rob, or in this case even murder. His race factor and sexual status were the key to this event. So many cases have a high percent of being about
race. The media is a huge part in making a crime go viral and having more people worried, even though the news is good in this case it was bad.
Flanagan wanted to video to spread. After the shooting, he went and put everything on all kinds of social media. Wanting to get the word out about what he has done and why he has done it. Within all the post and the pages that were faxed to the station approximately two hours later, had a suicide note attached. An unlawful act has happened that has many aspects in it such as murder, social media access, peer rejection, crime rates, statistics, cost of everything, and a long thought out process of how he would put it together. He warned the people before this ever happened. I do, but do not feel sorry for the people that got shot. They in this case caused it to happen. Yes, I do wish the department would have too it a lot more serious and maybe he could have got the help he needed. Something that got me the most altered is when the bullets had the two coworker’s names written on them. So much hate built up in his mind and
heart.