January 31

On this date in 2008, about 100 residents from the Princeton area rallied near the fountain on South Main Street and Mercer Street in Hightstown, New Jersey to protest a series of vandalism attacks in the area, many with anti-Semitic and anti-homosexual slurs and symbols. Twelve days later on February 11, 2008, Max Drazdik, 18, a student at George Washington University, Nikolai Afanassenkov, 18, a student at the University of Hartford, and Nicholas Kurahara, 18, a student at the University of Delaware, were charged with committing hate crimes out of the East Windsor Municipal Court for their alleged involvement in the January 7, 2008, spray-painting spree in Roosevelt, Hightstown, and East Windsor. Each could receive five years in prison and fines of up to $15,000, if convicted as charged.

On this date in 2010, in a camp for transients near the Hollywood Fred Meyer store in the northeast section of Portland, Oregon, a homeless man, Mark Chambrey, 49, was beaten and stomped to death allegedly by another homeless man with a penchant for violence, Patrick Fitzgerald Gurley, 45, as two other homeless men watched but did not intervene. Gurley, who is African-American, was previously found guilty of homicide, manslaughter, assault, drug possession, and other serious crimes dating back to 1983, and he has been charged with Mr. Chambrey's murder. Also around the time of Mr. Chambrey's murder, Gurley had been arrested for allegedly assaulting another homeless man in downtown Portland, but that charge was dismissed when the victim failed to appear in court. Oregon has no hate crime law pertaining to homelessness status, so Gurley could not be charged with a hate crime.