Police Open Criminal Investigation in Bullying Suicide of Buffalo Gay Teen

Earlier in the week I wrote about the sad story of the suicide death of high school freshman Jamey Rodemeyer. Now, the Amherst police (Rodemeyer lived in Amherst a Buffalo area suburb) are investigating whether school bullies could be charged with harassment or hate crimes related to Jamey Rodemeyer's suicide. As I have noted many times, actions and words do have consequences and if there are identifiable bullies that drove this young man to end his life as the only escape he could recognize, then they should face the consequences of the mean and vicious attacks on Rodemeyer. So to, in my opinion, should anti-gay zealots like Maggie Gallagher, Tony Perkins, Benedict XVI, et al, who continue to fan the flames of anti-gay bigotry and lend a level of respectability to hate and bigotry. Here are some excerpts from the Buffalo News:

Amherst police are investigating whether school bullies could be charged with harassment or hate crimes related to the suicide of Williamsville North High School freshman Jamey Rodemeyer.

Jamey was found dead outside his home Sunday morning after years of complaints by him that he was bullied and subjected to hateful comments in school and online, mostly related to his sexual orientation.

"We're going to look into whether he was the victim of any crimes leading up to his suicide," Police Chief John C. Askey said. "We're not indicating, not speculating at this point, that that is the cause of his death, ... but independently, there may have been crimes that have been committed against him."

"We've heard that there were some specific students, an identifiable group of students, that had specifically targeted Jamey, or had been picking on him for a period of time," Askey said.

While investigators are focusing on what may have transpired in the recent past, he said, police are under the impression that one to three students may have been bothering Jamey since he was a student at Heim Middle School. "We're looking into it to see if he was the victim of any crimes, and that's the bottom line," the chief said.

Jamey's mother had previously told The Buffalo News that she believed that a core group of middle school students bullied her son and that the situation worsened for him about a year ago, when many anonymous posts began showing up on Jamey's Formspring blog stating that he would be better off dead.
She knew about them because guidance counselors at the school had spoken with friends of Jamey who reported the posts. Many of his friends came to his defense on Formspring.

The Police Department's Special Victims Unit is assigned to handle Jamey's case, he said. If there are students who can be criminally prosecuted in Jamey's case, they could face minimum harassment violations. Using a computer to bully someone would elevate the charges to aggravated harassment, he said. And if the bullying centers primarily on Jamey's sexual orientation, then it's possible that hate crime charges could be filed, he said.

It is far past time that bullying be taken seriously and that Christianist endorse and/or generated hate speech be dealt with by police authorities. Freedom of speech ends when its is fostering and creating physical harm and/or the denial of civil rights of others. Personally, I hope that some of the bastards that bullied Rodemeyer literally to death have their sorry asses prosecuted.