Hate Crime Units and Institutional Support for Hate Crimes Training Police departments in all of the cities Human Rights Watch researched stated that they trained their officers on the basic elements of a hate crime. With the exception of Dearborn, Michigan, they also all have at least one officer who investigates bias crimes exclusively. In the Seattle, Phoenix, Chicago and New York police departments, a bias crime unit officer is responsible for investigating any incident where evidence exists that a bias motive was present. The utility of this protocol for investigating bias crimes, according to Sergeant Jerry Hill, head of the Phoenix Police Department's Bias Crime Detail, is that it "ensures someone with expertise on hate crimes is investigating the matter. It takes pressure off the responding officer to make the call on whether this was a hate crime."

+90

Human Rights Watch interview with Julie Pate, Seattle Office of Civil Rights, July 31, 2002.

Human Rights Watch interview with Sergeant Jerry Hil Phoenix Police Department, August 8, 2002.

Many local police departments, however, did not have the resources or a sufficient biascrime caseload to justify training all officers on how to investigate bias crimes or to appoint a specialized bias crime investigator. In Maine, the attorney general's office attempted to address this problem by asking each law enforcement agency in Maine to appoint a "civil rights officer" to review all crime reports for bias motivation indicia. Any report that contains indications of bias is forwarded to the attorney general's office for further review and guidance. Thomas Harnett, a prosecutor in the attorney general's office, stated that this system allows the office to assist local law enforcement agencies with bias crime investigations and also provides a layer of review for their work. In the aftermath of September 11, this system was used to refer September 11-related bias incidents to the Maine attorney general's office for review and consultation on further action."

Prosecution

1993

191

than the number of September 11-related hate crimes reported. But the proportion of September 11-related crimes that have been the subject of indictment and trial does not appear to vary significantly from the usual rates of indictment and trial for other types of crime. Many variables influence prosecution rates—including the ability of the police to identify a suspect, the quality of the evidence developed against him or her, the seriousness of the crime, and available prosecutorial resources. While our research did not uncover any instances of prosecutorial reluctance to take hate crimes seriously, some community activists expressed concern to us that prosecutors were placing insufficient priority on hate crime prosecutions.

Not all post-September 11 bias crimes were prosecuted as hate crimes under state or federal hate crimes legislation. For example, of the twelve September 11-related crimes prosecuted by the U.S. Justice Department, only half were charged under the federal hate crimes statute. Prosecuting a crime as a hate crime places an additional evidentiary burden on the prosecutor to prove in court not only the regular elements of the crime, but the existence of bias motivation as well. Proof of such bias was difficult to demonstrate unless the defendant confessed his mo

196

194 Human Right Watch interview with Neera Walsh, prosecutor. Cook County prosecutor's office Bias Crime

Unit, June 18, 2002.

195 Human Rights Watch interview with Bill Fitzgerald. public relations officer. Maricopa County district attorney office. August 3, 2002.

196 Human Rights Watch interview with Genna Gent and Daniel Levy, prosecutors. Michigan Attorney General's Hate Crimes Prosecution Team. June 3, 2002.

tivation, made statements during the crime demonstrating direct bias, or had otherwise clearly signaled his views. In the absence of strong evidence of bias, prosecutors often preferred to utilize regular criminal statutes to secure a conviction 19

Publicizing Prosecutions

September 11-related hate crime prosecutions did not only secure justice for particular victims. They also communicated society's repudiation of the crimes. Prosecution of September 11-related crimes conveyed the message that violent bigotry against Arabs and Muslims was not condoned and that law enforcement took seriously their obligation to protect all members of society and to bring those who committed crimes to justice.

According to Thomas Harnett, a prosecutor in the Maine attorney general's office, hate crime perpetrators "believe that their actions have community support." Publicizing prosecutions communicates the error of this belief to potential hate crime perpetrators as well as to the community at large. Indeed, according to Harnett, "one of the reasons we publicized [September 11-related] cases and successful enforcement actions was to instill in the community the belief that these incidents should be reported and when they are reported, victims are safer not more at risk.' Deepa Iyer of the South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow concurred that publicizing prosecutions lets affected community members know that the government is committed to protecting them and encourages victims to report hate crimes against them."

198

199

tions. At the federal level, the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice issued press releases on most of its twelve September 11-related prosecutions. The Civil Rights Division, however, did not hold any press conferences to publicize its prosecutions, even though some community groups thought press conferences would secure greater coverage. The Civil Rights Division nevertheless spread notice of its prosecutions by directly informing Arab. Muslim, Sikh, and South Asian community leaders and by sending the news to community e-mail lists.202 Although these communications did not reach the broader American public, they at least informed the affected communities that the federal government was working to punish bias crime perpetrators. The Civil Rights Division also publicized most of the prosecutions on its website, although the website was not always up to date.

prosecution of six September 11 related bias crumes. Phoenix police investigators also stated that working with prosecutors who specialize in bias crime prosecution gave them more confidence that the effort they put into investigating bias crimes would be taken seriously and better understood by prosecutors with traming on un derstanding the nature of bias crimes Com munity leaders believe specialized units pro vided them with a central point of contact and thus enabled them to develop a better relation ship with country prosecutors

The

Many small counties did not have the re. sources or large enough vulnerable communities to justify the creation of bias crime prosecution units. Recognizing the difficulty that small counties had undertaking the prosecution of Sep tember 11-related hate crimes, Michigan's attor ney general created in May 2002 a Hate Crimes Prosecution Team to enhance the capacity of local prosecutors in smaller counties team trains local prosecutors in the prosecution of hate crimes against Arab Americans and Musime as well as members of any other gre that may be targets of bas-motivated violence 19 aho offers to assist with the prosecution of the bas element of a hate crime during tra Michigan attorney general a perverte unique among the cites and dates Hunan Rights Watch visted because atraves prosecutors on My organ za 10" we crime protect WUoa vaving My every such expertne withm frew "Vwn aged >MA

Crimes with Mixed Motives

als translated into languages spoken in the communities, and the creation of hate crime "hotlines."

Relationship With Affected

Communities Before September 11

Nowhere were the benefits of a pre-existing government relationship with potential victim communities more apparent than in Dearborn, Michigan. Community leaders in Dearborn told Human Rights Watch that before September 11 they had regular and consistent meetings with the Dearborn mayor's office, the Dearborn Chief of Police, the Wayne County prosecutor's office, the state attorney general's office and the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan on a range of issues affecting Arabs and Muslims in and around Dearborn." According to community leaders, these meetings ensured that government agencies "more or less knew our concerns, regardless of whether we were always in agreement."

214

213

Outreach after September 11: Barriers to Trust

The general fear of government among Arab and Muslim immigrant communities remained one of the more significant challenges posed in creating working relationships with those communities on hate crime issues after September 11. According to Rita Zawaideh of the Arab America Community Coalition, an umbreila group of Arab organizations in western Washington: "In countries where many Arab immigrants are from, the government and the police are repressive, they are not your friend. This general fear of government was aggravated by the detention and deportation of Muslims and Arabs by the federal government after September 11 and by fears that reporting hate crimes would draw attention to non-citizens who had violated the terms of their visas.l Knpa Ubadhyay, hate crimes coordinator for the South Asian Network in Los Angeles related her experience organizing a community forum on September 11-related civil liberties issues: "We invited the FBI and INS. One hundred and fifty people attend a similar past forum, however only sixty attended this one. We later found out from many [who didn't attend] that they were afraid of being detained by the INS.-29 Similarly, Stephen Wessler of the Center on the Prevention of Hate Violence in Portland, Maine, stated: "what struck me most was not a fear of hate

The importance of such training was underscored by Sheila Bell. Communications Director for the Muslim Law Enforcement Officers Association of New York City. As an example, Bell cited the practice in Middle Eastern culture of not looking authority figures in the eye during discussions because doing so is a sign of disrespect. Bell stated that officers in the New York City police department have mistaken this habit as an effort to be deceitful. Similarly, Guru Roop Kaur Khalsa, a gurdwara official in Phoenix, narrated a discussion she had with a police officer who along with other officers were assigned to protect the gurdwara shortly after Balbir Singh Sodhi's murder, discussed in section

223

III above.224 The police officer reported to

Khalsa that the members of the officers' families were "very nervous" about them protecting the gurdwara because they thought Sikhs might be terrorists affiliated with Osama Bin Laden be