dogmush,
Before you got into baseless personal attacks, you were making a good point. It seems like this is an emotional issue for you, but the fact that I countered your argument and mocked your spelling doesn’t make my 4 short replies into several posts of crying or bloviating, as you claim.
I think you’re probably right that people reporting fake crimes don’t usually get the book thrown at them. Still, if one of those cases became as high-profile and expensive as this one, I think it’s not unreasonable to expect that the city would throw several books at them. I suspect, if I staged a hate crime in Chicago, and it somehow became as big a story as the Smollett case, I would be in far more trouble than Smollett is now. That's because I'm not wealthy, famous, black, or a pervert.