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Slurs And Monkey Sounds Blare Near A Black Family’s Home. Some Wonder Why It’s Not A ‘hate Crime.’

When her neighbor’s ban­jo music became so loud that it shook her Virginia Beach home, Jannique Martinez called the police on the man for his boom­ing speak­ers. The Black fam­i­ly had faced con­stant loud music since mov­ing to the neigh­bor­hood five years ago, but this time over the sum­mer was dif­fer­ent. Martinez was stunned at what she said she heard and saw on her front lawn in July: music blar­ing racial slurs and mon­key sounds as strobe lights flashed on her home. The lights and sounds have ter­ror­ized the moth­er and her fam­i­ly for not one, two or three days but sev­er­al months — and police say they are unable to do any­thing to stop the neighbor’s actions. The woman says the n‑word has been repeat­ed in the music so often that her young son has asked her what it means. “Whenever we would step out of our house, the mon­key nois­es would start,” Martinez told TV sta­tion WAVY. “It’s so racist, and it’s dis­gust­ing. … I don’t even know how else to explain it.”

The news of the alleged abuse, and Virginia Beach police say­ing the neighbor’s actions “did not rise to a lev­el that Virginia law defines as crim­i­nal behav­ior,” has tak­en off in recent days. Residents and crit­ics have called out the city and the police depart­ment for not doing more to pro­tect Martinez and her fam­i­ly, and local offi­cials said they “can­not let that stand in Virginia Beach.” The out­rage has height­ened after a clip post­ed Tuesday to Twitter of the strobe lights, slurs and mon­key nois­es being played at Martinez’s home was viewed near­ly 2 mil­lion times as of Wednesday after­noon. Some crit­ics have sug­gest­ed that the neigh­bor, who has not been pub­licly iden­ti­fied by author­i­ties, should face hate-crime charges, say­ing the case should fall under the state’s hate-crime law. Although police say the neighbor’s actions are “not crim­i­nal­ly action­able,” the Virginia hate-crime law sug­gests that this instance could be. Legal and law enforce­ment experts inter­viewed by The Washington Post said that while police could do more to help pro­tect the fam­i­ly, bring­ing about a hate-crime charge remains a high bar to clear, even with the amount of evi­dence and the dura­tion of the alleged abuse. Read the full sto­ry here:
https://​www​.wash​ing​ton​post​.com/​d​c​-​m​d​-​v​a​/​2​0​2​1​/​1​0​/​0​6​/​v​i​r​g​i​n​i​a​-​b​e​a​c​h​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​f​a​m​i​ly/