In 2012, Brandon White was attacked in an Atlanta neighborhood. The crime, which his attackers recorded and uploaded online , showed that he was attacked because he was gay.
Just before the holidays in November 2023, he became an officer with the Chamblee Police Department, transitioning from hate crime victim to first responder.
When footage of the attack was uploaded online by his attackers , the video went viral, according to City of Chamblee officials.
That’s when White learned he’d been attacked by strangers simply due to his sexual orientation, which is a hate crime.
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“I didn’t know any of the attackers,” now-Officer White said. “I didn’t know why they attacked me until I saw the video and learned that it was motivated by my sexuality. They felt like they didn’t want gays in their neighborhood.”
White worked with officers from the Atlanta Police Department and other agencies who investigated the hate crime . His case, according to Chamblee officials, was the first in Georgia to be prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office under the Shepard-Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2010 , a federal law that added a victim’s actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability status, as reasons for an attack to be deemed a hate crime.