City Council Debates Adding Hate Crime Penalties To City Code
By Mike Dunn, Jan Carabeo
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) --- A City Council committee today will debate whether to revise the city's code of conduct to include hate crimes. This comes in the wake of last month's beating of a gay couple in Center City.
Before Council's Public Safety Committee is a measure that boosts the penalties for a variety of crimes when the offender is found to be motivated by the victims sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.
Right now neither the city's code of personal conduct nor the state criminal code have special provisions for hate crimes. Under this bill, anyone convicted would have 90 days added on to the jail term imposed for the crime itself, and up to a $2,000 fine.
The sponsors admit these added penalties called for in the bill are relatively small. But they hope they will at least send a message to those who might consider such crimes, and might prod state lawmakers to take action as well.
The Center City beating of a gay couple on September 11th led to assault and other charges against three people from Bucks County.
The council committee will also consider two other bills: one would boost the penalties against merchants who sell BB guns to minors; the other would make it a crime to sell toy guns that look like real guns.