A prosecutor in northern Idaho has decided not to pursue hate crime charges against an 18-year-old who allegedly shouted a racist slur at members of the Utah women’s basketball team during the NCAA Tournament.
The deputy attorney for the city of Coeur d’Alene announced on Monday that, according to a charging decision document, although the use of the slur was “detestable” and “incredibly offensive,” there was no evidence to suggest that the man was threatening physical harm to the women or their property. Ryan Hunter wrote that this means the behavior is protected by the First Amendment and cannot be charged under Idaho’s malicious harassment law.
The University of Utah basketball team stayed at a hotel in Coeur d’Alene in March while they were competing in the NCAA Tournament in Spokane, Washington. The team members were walking from a hotel to a restaurant when a truck drove up and the driver shouted a racist word at the group. According to Tony Stewart, an official with the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations, after the team left the restaurant, the same driver came back with more people. They were revving their engines and yelling at the players again. Stewart shared this information during a news conference right after the event.
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A few days later, Utah coach Lynne Roberts said that the group was very concerned about their safety because the encounters were so disturbing. For many years, there have been far-right extremists in the region. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there were at least nine hate groups operating in the Spokane and northern Idaho region in 2018.
“We experienced multiple incidents of racial hate crimes directed towards our program, which was extremely distressing for all of us,” Roberts said. “It’s surprising to see how shocking it is in our world, especially in athletics and university settings.” There is a lot of diversity on a college campus, which is not something you often experience.
Officials from the University of Utah chose not to provide any comments regarding the decision made by the prosecutor on Wednesday.
Hunter stated in the document that the police interviewed almost twenty witnesses and carefully examined many hours of surveillance video. Multiple reliable witnesses reported that someone shouted a racist slur at the group while they were walking to dinner. However, the witnesses had different descriptions of the vehicle and the person who shouted the slur. Unfortunately, the police were unable to hear any audio of the yelling on the surveillance tapes.
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