Florida Attorney General plans to investigate Vice City @ Gaming Target

Written by John Scalzo on December 12, 2003

News: The State and Palm Beach Attorney Generals plan to investigate whether GTA: Vice City breaks discrimination and hate speech laws.

According to the Palm Beach Post, the Florida Attorney General's Office and the Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office have received requests to investigate whether Grand Theft Auto: Vice City has broken any laws when it tells players to "kill all the Haitians." Jon Levinson of the Delray Beach City Commission said "To me it sounds like this has got to be against the law. To tell people to kill a particular group of people? That has to violate some law."

Rockstar Games spokesmen continue to tell anyone who will listen that this exchange in the game is taken out of context, referring to a Haitian gang and not the entire Haitian community, but they have agreed to remove the Haitian mission from all future copies of the game.

Jean-Robert Lafortune of the Haitian-American Grassroots Coalition thinks this doesn't go far enough as he believes the millions of copies already sold and the copies still in stores for this holiday season are just as dangerous to the Haitian community. Jim Green, a lawyer for the ACLU countered with this about the case: "Speech alone, unaccompanied by any action, is protected by the First Amendment."

No one from either of the Attorney's offices had any idea if charges would be pressed against Rockstar or if the offending speech broke any laws.