Authorities Determine Wisconsin Hate Crime Never Occurred
Bernstein told her story on Good Morning America, the NFL celebrated her, and Meghan Markle called her.
Althea Bernstein, 18, of Madison, WI, claimed four white men spewed racial slurs at her, threw lighter fluid on her, and set her on fire.
Authorities determined no such incident occurred.
This crap really ticks me off. No wonder so many people have doubts when people cry hate crime.
Bernstein told her story on Good Morning America, the NFL celebrated her, and Meghan Markle called her.
A thorough investigation found that no one attacked Bernstein. The Madison Police Department stated:
The Madison Police Department dedicated significant resources to this case. The investigation was led by the MPD Violent Crime Unit, with support from the Forensic Services Unit and Central District. Detectives conducted numerous interviews, reviewed extensive video, and analyzed physical/digital evidence during the course of the investigation. MPD was assisted in these efforts by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI).
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Case findings were also reviewed by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Wisconsin and the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. Both independently evaluated the facts and reached the same conclusion as MPD.
The MPD released the case documents and photos along with a timeline, statements, and video of the timeline.
Reporting officer Bailey Olson could not find any evidence while reviewing city cameras. Bernstein could not provide “exactly which street she was driving on when she came to the red light” nor could she recall the exact time.
Olson could not “locate Bernstein or the four male subjects described by Bernstein on city cameras in the area or time that Bernstein stated the incident occurred.”
From NBC15:
The Madison Police Dept. noted that it “dedicated significant resources” to investigating Bernstein’s allegation, with detectives conducting numerous interviews, reviewing video, and analyzing physical and digital evidence.
“I think when you look at the materials and sort of the summary timeline that we provided, that really speaks for itself, but we weren’t obviously able to determine what did happen so there certainly were questions that we weren’t able to answer during this investigation,” Acting Madison PD Chief Vic Wahl told NBC15.
A statement from MPD stated Bernstein “was treated with dignity and respect at all times during the course of the investigation.” It also released a statement attributed to her family thanking police for their efforts.
“Althea Bernstein and her family appreciate the detailed investigative efforts by all involved in this case. Althea’s injuries are healing and the support of our community has been invaluable in that regard. We continue to maintain our family privacy and will not be granting interviews at this time,” the statement read.
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Comments
“Will not be granting interviews at this time.” How convenient. Perhaps Al Sharpton hasn’t been by to see them yet.
“Who’s that calling this time?”
“The call screen says ‘Ben Crump'”
“Pick it up, pick it up”
The Good Reverend Dullton, Jew-hater and riot-inciter, was too busy ghostwriting his new anti-Trump tome.
Probably attacked by the same guys who got Jussie Smollet.
Hoax we much?
Actual physical hate crimes against members of the left’s favorite identity groups are so rare they must be invented.
Muslims are pros at this.
A commenter to a Smollett story (maybe here on LI? not sure, my notes don’t say) said something pithy several months ago along the same lines:
“This is what happens when the demand for racism exceeds the supply.”
Where is the prosecution of this woman? She just slandered all Trump supporters.
You cannot charge a “protected class” for trying to incite a race war. That would be racist.
Subotai Bahadur
“I think when you look at the materials and sort of the summary timeline that we provided, that really speaks for itself, but we weren’t obviously able to determine what did happen so there certainly were questions that we weren’t able to answer during this investigation,” Acting Madison PD Chief Vic Wahl told NBC15.
“Speaks for itself.” A classic dodge. This is mealy-mouthism at its finest. Somebody obviously doesn’t want to go on record as saying anything which might be back to bite him later.
There’s no statement here that this was just another fraud. “Reporting officer Bailey Olson could not find any evidence while reviewing city cameras” says they didn’t find anything; on its own it certainly doesn’t say that nothing happened. “The Madison Police Department dedicated significant resources to this case” just means Uhh, we looked, honest, don’t blame us that we didn’t find anything.
These statements are just an attempt to take off the heat for not finding four MAGA-wearing “white supremacists” the police and SJWs can pin this on.
We know this is a fraud not because “authorities” say the policey couldn’t find any corroboration, we know it’s a fraud because this rubbish is always a fraud.
“Reporting officer Bailey Olson could not find any evidence while reviewing city cameras” says they didn’t find anything; on its own it certainly doesn’t say that nothing happened.”
______________
Something probably did happen to her, but it most likely was something done by a family member or a boyfriend of the woman, not four random white men out looking for a bi-racial woman to terrorize.
There was a building set on fire using lighter fluid that same night she was there and supposedly attacked. She is attempting to hide her involvement in the arson.
I was not aware of that. Now the story makes more sense.
Something did happen, but she did it herself, accidentally, while committing a felony.
It would be nice if they could connect her buying, or looting lighter fluid.
There should be drone cameras capturing hi resolution pictures of riots, specifically so charges can be brought afterwards.
I have no idea how involved she was, only that she was likely present and was burned as a result.
At one-time abuse of the system at least here was a pretty harsh penalty
The gazillionth attention-seeking, pathological narcissist, fabulist “victim” of racism.
There are quite obviously far more faux, contrived victims of alleged racism, than actual victims of racism, in our society, today. A positive trend — if only the vile, dishonest and race-agitating Dhimmi-crats were capable of acknowledging it.
The tag hoax should be fraud. She clearly drew all the short straws.
Wake me when they indict her. In the mean time, check into the other likely lie – she doesn’t look like a Bernstein.
What exactly is a Bernstein supposed to look like? Your comment is genuinely racist.
Your virtue signaling has fallen flat. I’m guessing that you don’t have many friends.
Go crawl back under your rock. I don’t have to guess about your “friends”.
Are you sure you’re okay? I’m worried about your emotional health.
I’m going to guess they look like a bear?
One thing I can guess is that a Bernstein is probably pretty smart.
And in this case would have been wrong.
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, expert on everything, called so everything’s good.
I am glad to hear that young Tawana is recovering from her imaginary, yet harrowing experience.
This is our last best chance to kick these SJWs out of the temple. Vote in November. Insist, that your friends and relatives do the same. America hangs in the balance. Work to enroll. Drive people to the polls. Don’t just say, do.
“Bernstein could not provide “exactly which street she was driving on when she came to the red light” nor could she recall the exact time.”
Christine Blasey Ford must be her publicist.
Odd. I missed this one in our fruit fly news cycle, but no matter. These fake ‘hate’ crimes are legion in the era of Trump. And I always (always) (read: ALWAYS) consider them fake hate, fake crime, fake incident, fake, fake, fake UNTIL proven NOT fake.
Don’t expect any serious prosecution for this scheming scammer.
She’s not being charged because they can’t prove it didn’t happen. This is not the Jussie Smollett case, where they found what did happen, and thus who set it up. In this case they don’t have video of her harming herself, they don’t have anything at all, so they can’t charge her.
Headline: Authorities Determine Wisconsin ‘Hate’ Crime Never Occurred.
So why are we discussing?
The difference between a headline and what’s actually in the story.
And yet the headline is saying more openly what the police won’t. They found no evidence and her story fell apart and they thanked the police for “trying” and went into hush hush and hiding…seeing a pattern?
Because the headline is wrong. The authorities didn’t prove the “crime” never occurred, they just couldn’t find evidence that it did. You and I are free to conclude that it didn’t, but we can’t prove it, let alone beyond reasonable doubt. You do understand, don’t you, that that is the standard of proof required to charge her?
For those of you who don’t Madison WI. Madison is ultra liberal in all ways. They vote like 80+% Dems every election. So you know they would be invested in backing up her story. If the =MPD officers couldn’t find any evidence, then you KNOW there was NONE.
Hippies will still continue to refer to this story in their “so many white-on-black hate crimes!” fairy tales years from now. Another log for the SJW fantasy furnace.
The investigation failed to substantiate any of the particulars of the “victim’s” story. This simply means that all that can be proven is that she has some kind of thermal burn on her face from an unknown source. So, it is entire up to the reader as whether he believes the story or not.
Now, I apologize in advance for this, but I hate the classification of “hate crime”. The classification itself is grossly discriminatory. Why should there be increased penalties for a person, who hits another over the head with a baseball bat, if the motive is some kind of racial animosity? Does the victim suffer any less if the motive is for monetary gain or simply for the thrill of attacking someone? Is the victim of a racially motivated attack entitled to greater redress than someone who is not attacked based upon his or her race? Whatever happened to equal justice under the law?
And who decides whether or not a criminal act is motivated by “hate”?
Our courts try actions, not thoughts. The concept of “hate crime” has no place in our justice system.
Motivation often has a legitimate effect upon a potential criminal act. For instance example, shooting someone is a criminal act in every state in the Union. However, if a person shoots another, who, with a raised knife in his hand, runs toward another man, and the person shooting him does it out of motivation to protect the man without the knife, this is taken into consideration. The shooter may actually be found to be justified. Even if found to not be justified, his penalty may be significantly reduced due to the circumstances and his motivation. Also, intent is the difference between 2nd degree homicide and manslaughter, in most states. So, intent can be important. But, in the case of hate crimes, the penalty for a specific criminal act is heightened or lessened, based upon the race, gender, age or sexual orientation of the victim, that criminal penalty is by definition discriminatory. Justice wears a blindfold for a reason.
No, it is not. The penalty is heightened based only on the criminal’s motivation, which you just admitted courts are competent to find and is a legitimate factor in sentencing. All hate crime laws do is make it a mandatory factor instead of leaving it to the judge’s discretion; a side effect of that is that to be so used it must be found by the finder of fact.
If you approve of punishing hate, you approve of punishing thought. There is no way around that.
Her parents need to get her psychological help. You burn yourself like this for attention? Sad.
She probably did not burn herself on purpose. She likely received the injuries as part-and-parcel of some failed rioting. (Not too sharp is Miss Bernstein.)Steve Sailer has covered this story well. Here’s a link to one of his earlier pieces on it:
https://www.takimag.com/article/putting-out-the-fire-with-lighter-fluid/
Sorry. I didn’t follow the link before I made my now superfluous comment.
In any case, if the intersection Bernstein claims she was stopped at, but wasn’t, when someone squirted her with lighter fluid through an open window, then tossed in a lit lighter, is so well covered by city/private surveillance cameras, imagine how well covered the area around the City County Building is covered.
Amazing, isn’t it? The arson dog found no traces of lighter fluid in the car. And how could only the lighter fluid that landed on her face light on fire? And don’t MAGA hat wearing White Supremacists ™ use decorative garden tiki torches?
Not to worry – like the vast majority of these “hate crimes,” the Left can always say they’re “fake but accurate.”
I suspect no one ever taught her the rule about squirting lighter fluid on an existing fire.
It seems that an examination of the car itself should pretty much either put this one to rest or validate it.
As I already responded to anonamom, but you can’t say it enough, the arson dog found no traces of lighter fluid in Bernstein’s car.
BUSTED!
It’s a shame the supply for racial hate crimes cannot keep up with the demand. Perhaps we could outsource to other countries? It is a disgrace that this young woman had to supply her own hate crime to make up for this lack. America needs to address this vital shortage immediately. What if the Russians take advantage of the Hate Crime gap? How can we keep up with countries that are leading in production of hate crimes?
Shame on you, America is already meeting the challenge!
Mobs in Canada and Europe, who apparently have no domestic examples of police brutality of their own to protest, held riots in honor of George Floyd!
Hey! Be patient. We’re importing all the Nigerian body builders we can track down to take up the slack until the factory ramps up production of the domestic model.
Althea “Tawana ‘Jussie “Bubba ‘Isaih Martin’ Wallace” Smollet’ Brawley” Bernstein.
If you want to construct your own over 400 names long, visit fakehatecrimes.org .
The police statement about “insufficient evidence” is a little unsatisfying but I suspect there’s a reason for that.
To review, the pertinent details of the “hate crime” she reported to police:
https://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/police-woman-claims-she-was-the-victim-of-a-hate-crime-and-lit-on-fire/
“Althea Bernstein had told police that on June 24th at around 1:00 a.m., she was stopped at a red light in Madison when she heard someone yell a racial slur and a group of four men appeared and starting dousing her with lighter fluid through the open window in her car.”
But the area she reported the attack is well covered by city surveillance cameras as well as private security cameras to which the police have access. She’s not on any of those cameras. Neither are her purported assailants.
In fact, the only surveillance camera video of Althea Bernstein and her car (BTW the arson dog found no trace of lighter fluid in it) at around 1:00 a.m. is from Middleton WI, which is seven miles away. She’s sitting in her car at a stoplight with the windows rolled up (detail’s in the linked article).
Around 1:00 a.m., remember. Around being the operative word. All times are approximate.
Still, it looks like SOMETHING happened to her. She does have burns on her face. The hospital did treat her for burns as opposed to kicking her out for lying about being injured. How, pray tell, could she have gotten those marks on her face?
Hmm. Tis a complete mystery. A befuddlement. Perhaps some other event, perhaps even a completely different crime, could solve the riddle. And perhaps the police are waiting until they have sufficient evidence of that other crime to issue a more satisfying statement.
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2020/06/24/madisons-days-of-rage/
“…About 1 a.m. Wednesday June 24, a man tossed a firebomb into the City County Building, 211 S. Carroll St., which houses the 911 call center, the Madison Police Department and other city and county offices. The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the firebomber…
All sarcasm aside, Althea Bernstein looks like the special kind of stupid who’d file an obviously false police report imagining that such a fraud would throw the local, state and fed LEOs off her trail. She also looks like the special stupid is strong in her, strong enough that if she thinks if she lies about being the victim of a RACIAL!! HATE!! CRIME!! she can’t be charged with being a leftist arsonist.
She probably spilled a buffet steam tray on herself while trying to take it back to her table.