Story highlights David M. Perry: To be disabled in America is to be at greater risk of violence

General public -- and even many disabled people -- aren't focused on issue of such violence he says

David M. Perry is an associate professor of history at Dominican University in Illinois. He writes regularly at his blog: "How Did We Get Into This Mess?" Follow him on Twitter. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.

(CNN) It's a horrific incident. On Tuesday afternoon, Chicago police found a young man wearing shorts, wandering the streets, clearly in distress. They matched him to a missing persons call from a nearby suburb. Over the next day, gruesome details emerged of what had happened to the 18-year-old, mentally disabled male. According to police, the young man was kidnapped and tortured, his abuse streamed live over Facebook. The alleged assailants are black, and at one point on the video, a male voice can be heard yelling, ""f*ck Donald Trump" and "f*ck white people." Four individuals have been charged.

David M. Perry

The racist comments are inflammatory. People -- via both formal and social media -- have expressed outrage. But while the nature of the remarks on the video have unsurprisingly sparked much discussion about race, Trump and the live streaming of crimes, something important risks being overlooked: the chilling, everyday, truth that to be disabled in America is to be at greater risk of violence.

According to CNN, local law enforcement officials have charged the four suspects with a "hate crime, felony aggravated kidnapping, aggravated unlawful restraint and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon." But much of the speculation over whether this was a hate crime has focused on the issue of race.

People with disabilities are, of course, protected under both federal and Illinois hate crime legislation. To qualify under current federal law, according to Samuel Bagenstos, a law professor at the University of Michigan and former Department of Justice official, the crime must involve interstate commerce in some way. He told me that broadcasting over Facebook Live might make such a prosecution possible.

The Illinois statute , for its part, defines a hate crime as a criminal act against someone "by reason of the actual or perceived race, color, creed, religion, ancestry, gender, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, or national origin of another individual or group of individuals, regardless of the existence of any other motivating factor or factors." If the victim was singled out for his disability, that should be reason enough in Illinois.

Read More