If (the victim) was physically assaulted and there were any indications racial slurs were used, or that they had plotted and intended to harm him, this would constitute a hate crime.

I learned a strange thing... that in a jumble of unintelligible talk, the word "nigger" leaps out with electric clarity. You always hear it and it always stings. And always it casts the person using it into a category of brute ignorance. I thought with some amusement that if these two women only knew what they were revealing about themselves to every Negro on that bus, they would have been outraged.

The fact that we're having this discussion speaks volumes. There have been all kinds of racial slurs, but only this one continues to have the same powerful meaning for people that it did when it was first used. If you were to call someone a 'mick' today, you just might have to explain what that is.

Nothing showed up that would indicate, at least from those cases we reviewed, that racial slurs or planting of evidence was found, ... Maybe he was a racist on his own time, not on LAPD time.

Strange that people are happy to adopt epithets they would fight to the death to throw off had they been imposed.

Initial indications are that an incendiary was used.