Journalist A.C. Thompson, writing for The Nation magazine, documented that white vigilantes shot black men at will during Hurricane Katrina in Algiers Point, part of the City of New Orleans, and no one has been investigated, much less prosecuted. Furthermore, associated video of white men boasting about their deeds indicates the men acted with police approval.

"I know that they did not physically come up to our house and tie a belt around her neck," Tina says. "But when adults are involved and continue to screw with a 13-year-old - with or without mental problems - it is absolutely vile.” (Tina Meier to The St. Charles Journal, regarding what happened to her daughter, Megan Taylor Meier) Tina and Ron Meier of O'Fallon, Mo., mourn their daughter, Megan. In 2006, while her mother prepared family dinner, Megan hung herself with a belt in her bedroom closet after being tormented on MySpace, the victim of cyberbullying and a prank so heinous that it's turned some bloggers and Net readers into a "cyber lynch mob."