DUTCHESS COUNTY – Senior Assistant District Attorney Anthony Parisi, running for District Attorney in November, is proposing the creation of a “Hate Crimes” bureau with the creation of the county’s first-ever “Hate Crimes Prosecutor” position.
A large-scale hate crime occurred in the Town of Dover in 2021, where four men beat and robbed men on the basis of their nationality. The four convicts initiated the attack on the Guatemalan men because the ringleader said they were “Mexican”. Nicholas Gast, the leader of the convicts showed his bias by not realizing that all Latino men are not from Mexico. That ignorance helped Gast get a 40-to-life prison sentence from Dutchess County Court Judge Edward McLoughlin.
Pointing out that hate crimes have a “devastating effect beyond the harm and grievous injury inflicted on any one individual,” he said they create a community-wide sense of trauma.
Parisi said, “I am committed to aggressively prosecuting hate crimes that are committed against a victim based on race, color, national origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.”
Parisi told Mid-Hudson News that he has “zero tolerance” for individuals who commit hate crimes and will create an office that will enforce that policy. “I will appoint a hate crimes prosecutor in my office, the first ever in Dutchess County, who will have countywide jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute these pernicious acts against individual victims and the community.”
The hate crimes prosecutor will have the training, expertise, and resources to carry out this zero-tolerance policy. “I want to make it unequivocally clear that hate will have no home in Dutchess County under my watch as District Attorney.”
Westchester County District Attorney Miriam Rocah has initiated a training and development program for law enforcement and prosecutors to improve responses to hate and bias-motivated crimes while strengthening victim…
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