ATLANTA (AP) — Atlanta police said Tuesday that three men and a juvenile could face hate crimes charges after they pulled down LGBTQ+ pride flags and cut them up at an intersection known as the center of the city’s LGBTQ+ community.
Police say they got calls at 1:40 a.m. Tuesday morning that six males were causing a disturbance near the corner of Piedmont Avenue and 10th Street, an intersection in the city’s Midtown neighborhood that is painted with rainbow crosswalks to honor its importance in Atlanta’s LGBTQ+ community.
The men coordinated their plan and drove to Atlanta from their locations northwest of the city, police said. Officers are still looking for two of the six people who they believe took part.
Investigators initially told news outlets that the men had pulled down flags outside Blake’s on the Park, a bar near the intersection, cutting them up with a knife and taking videos of what they were doing. The males fled from police on motorized scooters, investigators said, with officers catching and arresting four of them.
“They’re in the middle of the street popping wheelies, tearing up flags,” a man said in a 911 call that police released.
Two 18-year-olds and a 17-year-old from Dallas, Georgia, were taken into custody, in addition to a 16-year-old from Taylorsville. Police said all four were also charged with obstruction, criminal damage to property, conspiracy, and prowling. Georgia is one of three states where 17-year-old criminal suspects are automatically charged as adults.
Police said they have also cited the 16-year-old’s father for failing to supervise his son.
A prosecutor would have to decide whether to ask a judge or jury to add additional penalties to any conviction. Georgia’s hate crime law, passed in 2020, allows a court to impose additional prison time or fines when a judge or jury finds that a crime was motivated by the victim’s race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation or other characteristics.
“As far as it being labeled a hate crime, that’s still under investigation,” Atlanta police Sgt. Brandon Hayes said at a Tuesday news conference. “We’re still looking at all avenues as far as how that charge will possibly come about.”
A phone call Tuesday to the bar, in operation since 1988, went unanswered.
The arrests come at the end of what is marked as Pride Month in many places, although Atlanta’s main festival is held in October.
In 2022, police arrested a man who they said had twice painted swastikas on the rainbow crosswalks. The crosswalks were first painted in 2015 and were made permanent in 2017 to memorialize the 49 people who were killed in the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida.
In October, a Fulton County grand jury indicted a Pennsylvania man, saying he had vandalized booths and defecated on a pride flag at a Global Black Pride event in Atlanta in August.
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An earlier version incorrectly said police had charged the men with a hate crime. Prosecutors must make that decision in Georgia
