Attack on gay may cost fireman his job: Franchot Opela, 27, was convicted of misdemeanor assault in July in what prosecutors called a hate crime, beating a 21-year-old man bloody and unconscious after repeatedly yelling "faggot'' at the man. [...] Fabian Padilla was found in the parking lot in a pool of blood when deputies from the Pima County Sheriff's Department responded. Opela and his friends, including firefighter Todd Thompson, did not render aid and fled the scene before deputies arrived. [...] Opela was sentenced to 12 months of unsupervised probation, 40 hours of community service and eight hours of anger counseling.
Hmm. Misdemeanor assault. Really. That's all. Unsupervised probation and ONE WORK WEEK of community service. That's it. Yes. Well. Oh, and Anger Counseling. Right. Well.
Moving on a bit ...
Let's see: person certified to treat medical emergencies not only doesn't do so, but actually causes the emergency in the first place. And somehow, there's actually a debate about whether or not he should lose his job. Right.
I'd have thought being convicted of a crime against another person would pretty much take care of that automatically. Surprise, surprise, surprise.
You wonder about that Thompson guy. No mention of him losing his job for being at the scene and not rendering aid. Granted, the article wasn't about him. But you get the impression that if he'd been punished, they'd probably have mentioned it; else why mention him at all? To be sure, the punishment for simply refusing to help might well be different for someone who didn't cause the situation in the first place ... except that helping is what the man is supposed to do, isn't it?
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
Search entries:
12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!