Perspectives: Sam’s Perspective – Doing it Right

As a general rule, when I talk about our state lawmakers, I can be pretty harsh. My reasons are obvious, to me anyway. So much serious work to be done and about all I see is a promise that they’ll do better, especially now that they’ve voted themselves a 35% raise.
That little move seemed to be a little bit snarky to me, but I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt, which I do have. Maybe because they come from all corners of the state they are incapable of big changes and are forced to make baby steps to get to the big changes. The sort of moves that bring to mind the old saying, “you have to crawl before you can walk”. So, I decided to watch for baby steps, as a sign of some sort of progress. Low and behold, I saw one. A baby step we can all be proud of. That step was taken by State Senator Ron Sharp, a Republican from Shawnee. His baby step came because he found out about an incident in which one of his constituents was badly beaten. The incident involved two white men, Devan Johnson and Brandon Killian. Seems they attacked Jarric Deshawn Carolina. The two men hit and kicked Caroline while shouting racial slurs. Caroline was beaten to the point of life threatening injuries from which he has not yet recovered. The incident occurred last June. The two men were charged with aggravated assault and battery, conspiracy and malicious intimidation, all of which fall under Oklahoma’s hate crime statue. Under current law, the two men can only be charged with a misdemeanor. Meaning they can just walk away.
Senator Sharp said, that isn’t adequate justice, so he has filed legislation to toughen the state’s hate crime law. Under Sharp’s bill, district attorneys will be able to charge hate crime offenders with a felony.
The proposed legislation won’t help Mr. Caroline heal any faster but it might just help stop the next hate crime in which a beating would be involved. Hats off to Senator Sharp for taking this step. A baby step but a step in the right direction. Now if we can just figure out why men such as Devan Johnson and Brandon Killian behave the way they do, we might be able to turn a baby step into a giant step toward ending hate crimes altogether. And maybe after that we can figure out hate, which would be much more than a baby step.
I’m Sam Jones and that’s my perspective.