Brooklyn attack arrest: Is ‘knockout game’ a hate crime?

by Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer

November 23, 2013

Hate crime charges against a black Brooklyn man for assaulting a white man could raise the stakes over what to do about the so-called “knockout game,” where primarily young black men surprise white victims with a rain of punches – sometimes for a $5 bet. … “There’s an element to who wants to see this through the lens of race,” Jeffrey Butts, a criminologist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan, told the New York Times. He added that the appearance of black knockout game players triggers “racial alarms.”

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