Man who threatened to stab train full of LGBT+ people only fined £613

A man who threatened to stab a train full of LGBT+ people after Brighton Pride last year has only been fined £613 for his hate crime.

Chadd MacIntosh verbally abused a group of passengers on a train from Brighton to London after Pride in August last year, calling them "perverts", " batty men" and "f****ts" who "deserve to be killed". He then threatened he would stab every gay person in the carriage, shouting:

You're in London now, we carry knives here.

The incident was filmed by LGBT+ journalist Benjamin Butterworth, who later said:

Being barely a metre from him and the knife he claimed to have, I sat perfectly still trying to make no eye contact in the hope of going unnoticed.

I had not captured some of his most violent comments. They were so threatening I daren’t trigger him.

Now, almost a year on, MacIntosh has been found guilty of a public order offence with the aggravating factor of a hate crime and punished with a £613 fine, according to Pink News.

However, MacIntosh's punishment has since been criticised by Butterworth, who submitted his video to police of evidence. The journalist said:

The trauma of that rail journey has lived with me since. But what made it so much worse was the system’s response – from police demanding to look through my phone to the woeful punishment the man received at the end of it.

I believed the law would be fully on my side and that of other commuters affected. The incident had many witnesses, took place on public transport, and was virulently homophobic. How wrong I was.

HT Pink News

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