The family of the Muslim girl who falsely claimed that she was assaulted by a group of rowdy Trump supporters on a subway platform is responding to the news that she’ll be criminally prosecuted for making up a crime. 

By attacking the NYPD. Seriously. 

 

 

Yasmin Seweid’s sister has posted about the incident on Facebook: pic.twitter.com/pW3cgEVBsP

— Sara Yasin (@missyasin) December 15, 2016

There’s a lot to unpack here. Let’s examine some of her statements:

“The police’s first instinct is to doubt your story and try to disprove it.” 

Well, yeah, if by “disprove” you mean ask questions and examine the evidence and determine the truth for the purpose of solving the crime. That is in fact the job of the police, to solve crimes. Sometimes in the course of doing their job they discover that alleged crimes don’t exist. 

“I am deeply concerned about the mental state of Young Muslim women who feel they have to lie so intensely to survive.”

This sounds reasonable. In many countries young Muslim women are treated like second class citizens. But not in New York city, a wonderful place where people of all colors and creeds go about their business and interact peacefully millions of times every single day. 

“I know this isn’t the first time something like this happens(sic) so I really think people who are so concerned about how Muslims will be perceived in the media or how future hate crimes will be dealt with need to take a step back and think about how Muslim woc have felt the need to do this. It’s not for attention. The NYPD doesn’t care about us or our safety. Never did.” 

Oh, boy. So her sister invented a crime to call attention to the actual persecution she faces but feels no need to report? That doesn’t make any sense. Why hasn’t she reported the slew of other issues she’s faced? If she’s been abused, there are countless social welfare organizations she could reach out to. If she’d been assaulted in the past, credibly, she could have called the police. Why would someone feel the need to make up a crime if they’re in fact the subject of continuous persecution like Seweid alludes to? Moreover, the NYPD responded to her “assault” and thoroughly investigated it. Now she’s mad because they didn’t go on a wild goose chase to find a perpetrator who didn’t really exist?

 The NYPD can only respond to criminal acts when properly informed, and. Inventing crimes out of whole cloth diverts their attention from solving actual crimes and puts innocent New Yorkers at risk. That’s why it’s a crime. If you start allowing people to file false reports without consequences, you get more false reports. You might even end up with a few false convictions. 

It sounds like Seweid is a teenager with a lot of problems, but it is absolutely ludicrous for her family to blame society, the NYPD, or anyone, really, for her suffering. We understand that kids are stupid, and that kids make mistakes. But it’s important to remember: she’s not being punished here because she’s Muslim, she’s being punished because she invented a crime out of whole cloth as an attention getting device. If she wants to blame someone, she shoudlo start by looking in the mirror.