A white teen, social media identified as a student at Southington High School in Connecticut, made a racist video that included threats of lynching Black people and claims that he “hung 12 Black men from a tree just this night.”
The teen refers to people in the group chat as c**n-skinned [expletive] animals” and says that everyone that is a “n-word” can expect a cross burned in their yard, and that if you’re offended by him saying it he will “come over there and lynch you like one.”
He also welcomes people to come to him and use their “food stamps to pay for an Uber.”
The video was recorded in Snapchat and shared on Twitter.
While the school and police are investigating, it seems they are unsure if the messages have a criminal aspect.
At this time, no charges have been filed, but police have spoken to the teen in question and his parents.
Watch the edited video here.
“We have a pretty good idea of individuals with whom we’re dealing,” said Timothy Connellan, Superintendent of Schools.
His notice to the community on Thursday said in part that the video, “contains sexually explicit, inappropriate language, and language implying the support of violence against people of color.”
He continued that students would face “disciplinary consequences consistent with Board of Education Policy and Regulation and the applicable State and Federal statutes and regulations.”
Connellan said the hate is something that has increased in the community.
“We’ve seen an uptick in it,” he said. “I have to believe that it has an awful lot to do with the tension that’s here nationally.”
A parent of one student, Marvin Morales, says this isn’t new. “From what I hear from my kid going to the school and all that, it’s nothing new. I hear that they hear the n-word all the time.” said Morales.
But the school said no students are in any danger. Southington High School has just under 2,000 students, and 15 percent are identified as minority. Southington is 92.3 percent white.
Scot X. Esdaile, president of the NAACP’s state chapter, said that while the state has hate crime laws, they’re not often enforced.
“It seems that people in leadership positions aren’t taking hate crimes seriously.”
In 2017, 107 law enforcement agencies in Connecticut provided information to the FBI, but only 44 agencies actually reported hate crimes. Collectively, the 44 agencies reported 111 hate crimes to the FBI. The majority of the victims (59.6 percent) were targeted because of racial and ethnic bias, and 50.7 percent of offenders were white.
Southington Police Department’s statement regarding the racist video said, in part, “The statements that were made on this posting were done in a private social media chat. Another person in the conversation then distributed them publicly.”
Back in August, a white Connecticut man was charged with a hate crime for smashing a brick in a police cruiser of a white officer and admitted he targeted white cops and hated police.
In May, the House passed a bill making police attacks a hate crime. The ACLU and NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund petitioned against it citing that the bill weakens the purpose of protecting historically persecuted groups, and that protected classes should remain racial, gender, sexual or faith minorities.
VIDEO: Racist video prompts investigation by Southington schools, police
An investigation is underway in Southington after an inappropriate video allegedly recored by a student, was posted on social media
Reader Question: Where do you think this teen gets the language he uses in this video from
