An eighth suspect has been arrested in a series of brutal, anti-gay hate crimes against four men, New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly announced Saturday, leaving one last suspect at large.
"When you hear the details of what occurred, torture really is the only word that comes to mind," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a Saturday press conference with Kelly.
The incident involved three victims being held against their will by as many as nine assailants who beat them in a vacant apartment and sodomized two of them, Kelly said Friday. A fourth victim was beaten and robbed in connection with the attacks, Kelly said.
The string of attacks, which occurred Sunday, began when members of a street gang calling themselves the Latin King Goonies learned that an aspiring member is gay, authorities said.
"I was sickened by the brutal nature of these crimes and saddened at the anti-gay bias that contributed to them," Bloomberg said Saturday. "Hate crimes such as these strike fear into all of us."
The details are accounted in clinical, almost antiseptic detail, but it's clear that this was motivated by homophobia so virulent that it resulted in this hideous beating of four people. Cigarette burns, chain lashings, beatings with a baseball bat, and much worse.
The real outrage is that while this is sickening, we've allowed worse to happen to folks in Gitmo and in renditions around the globe. When criminals do this, it's rightfully a crime. When the state does it, it's national security.
Something to remember.
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