The outcome of a trial in Albany, New York this week is an omen of more fake hate crime hoaxes to come. Two black students that were convicted of a fake report of a racial hate crime to police – to cover up their own misbehavior -- and will get off with no jail time. Hardly a disincentive for future racialism hoaxers. The Albany Times-Union reports (hat tip: Gateway Pundit):

An Albany County jury on Wednesday found two former University at Albany students guilty of falsely reporting a hate crime on a bus full of drunk college students last January, but cleared them of assault and other charges. (snip)

… the jury found them guilty of some but not all of the counts of false reporting that they faced — namely, the counts alleging they falsely reported an incident when they called 911 and posted on social media that they had just been the victims of a hate crime.

On the 911 calls, Agudio can be heard saying "I beat up a boy" and "I had three bitches down" before an operator picked up the call. Both women told operators that they had just been jumped on a bus by a group of white people because they were black. Not long after, they took to Twitter to lament the alleged attack.

They were cleared of two false reporting counts, however, that pertained to reports they gave to Albany Police Officer Tracy Sandoval and Police Sgt. Louis Aiossa.

The case was anything but low profile, when the girls made their accusations:

The case was steeped in controversy from the moment it was reported.

Agudio and Burwell called police immediately after leaving the bus on Jan. 30, 2016, to report they had just been jumped by a group of white men and women because of their skin color. The bus driver didn't do anything, they said, and neither did the passengers on the bus, who just watched or recorded the assault on their phones.

But public outrage and sympathy soon turned to anger when video surveillance from the bus was released and appeared to show the opposite: the alleged victims attacking white passengers on the bus.

Agudio and Burwell were expelled. A friend of theirs who was on the bus that night and also reported the alleged crime, Alexis Briggs, was suspended after authorities deemed she played a lesser role in the brawl. She accepted a plea deal in court last summer, and told a judge she "should have done more to correct the narrative and truthfully explain what happened on the bus."

Here is the video:

In this age of hypersensitivity to even the most microscopic of racial offenses, phony hate crime accusations are inevitable. Claiming racism automatically confers presumptive victimhood upon members of a “protected class” when disputing something with the unprotected classes. The Fakehatecrimes.org database reveals the extent of the plague, yet the mainstream media are loath to consider the extent of the problem.

The convicted girls knew that they were playing a trump card, and did so to hide their own culpability as aggressors. These fake hate crime reports are a cancer on race relations, alienating people from one another, leading to spiraling hatred. The only way it canbe fought is to pass laws making a false report of a bias crime subject to the same punishment as the purported crime itself.