In response to rising hate crimes, State Attorney General Bill Lockyer has appointed a high-powered commission to advise him, and the lieutenant governor has created another panel to explore prevention.
While Lockyer’s commission will focus on legal and criminal issues, including the reporting and prosecution of hate crimes, the panel created by Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante will explore educational efforts, determining how communities can change “the hearts of men and women,” he said.
“What I see here, and what I am very pleased to see, is that two high-level state officials are saying this must become a state priority,” Assemblyman Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) said from his office this week. Steinberg is a member of Congregation B’nai Israel, one of the three Sacramento-area synagogues hit by the June 18 arsons.
The reporting of hate crimes and enforcement of existing laws is a task that has confounded state officials since 1991, according to Lockyer.
While the arsons and a spate of shootings drew global attention, the vast number of hate crimes go unreported and unprosecuted, leaving victims hurt, humiliated and without recourse, the attorney general said.
As a Democratic state senator from Hayward, Lockyer penned a 1991 law that mandates special-circumstance convictions and penalties for bias-motivated aggression.
But spotty reporting means perpetrators are seldom prosecuted.
While Lockyer declined to estimate how wide the discrepancy may be, the New Jersey-based National Victims Center claims that less than half of law enforcement agencies report hate crimes.
The groups most frequently targeted include African-Americans (3,945), whites (1,554), Jews (1,236) and gay men (937), the nonprofit organization said.
“Everyone can understand that [accused North Valley Jewish Community Center gunman Buford O.] Furrow is a despicable human being who has committed a hate crime,” said Lockyer spokesman Nathan Barankin. “But what if Mr. Furrow walks down the street, sees an African-American man coming towards him and pushes him down?”
At most, he would be guilty only of a misdemeanor, unless police discovered he was acting out of racial bias.
“The law provides an enhancement if the underlying offense is found to be a hate crime,” Barankin said. “Under the Lockyer law, that means prison time — not rinky-dink jail time. We need to be able to ask the right questions to understand whether a hate crime has occurred.”
When Lockyer announced the commission’s formation on Aug. 16 at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, he introduced a new state Department of Justice protocol to ensure a speedy response to hate crimes .
He also unveiled the department’s 1998 report on hate crimes, which reveals that nearly five hate crimes are reported to police each day in the Golden State.
Other hightlights of the report:
*The state Department of Justice received notice of 1,800 offenses from local law enforcement agencies. However, only 131 instances resulted in a conviction.
*Nearly 70 percent of the reported incidents involved an act of violence.
*In 65 percent of reported cases, the assailant targeted victims because of their race or ethnicity.
The attorney general’s office has been issuing the hate-crime report since 1994. Local law enforcement agencies send reports of bias-motivated crimes to the state Department of Justice each month.
While civil libertarians fear laws that tread on free speech rights, civil rights advocates have long charged that existing hate crimes laws fall far short of protecting victims and prosecuting perpetrators.
That debate will continue in Bustamente’s group. Although the panel is charged with exploring the non-criminal aspects of racial bias, at least one member plans to advocate for aggressive surveillance of hate groups when necessary.
“We’re at a point now in California where we can’t ignore the symptoms that have afflicted not just the state but the nation,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Weisenthal Center and Museum of Tolerance. “There is a reluctance after Waco to trample on First Amendment rights, but the FBI does not monitor any of the hate-group sites on the Net, and some of those groups deserve closer scrutiny — wiretapping, when necessary.”
As an example of the kind of material Hier would like scrutinized, on a World Church of the Creator Web site, two armed commandos open fire on Pope John Paul II when viewers click on the image.
“To my way of thinking, that is not First Amendment-protected speech,” Hier said. “That is a specific threat against a specific individual.”
Joining Hier on the lieutenant governor’s commission is Rabbi Brad Bloom, spiritual leader of Sacramento’s B’nai Israel, which was firebombed in the June attack. Kevin Starr, the state librarian and California historian, and attorney Morton Friedman, who also sits on the national board of the Anti-Defamation League, have also been named to the group.
S.F.-based commissioners include Lester Olmstead-Rose, former director of Community United Against Violence, which has fought violence targeting the gay community, and Carole Hayashino, adjunct professor at San Francisco State University and specialist in the World War II-era internment of Japanese-Americans.
Reflecting on the tall order facing his commission, Bustamante said, “We can and should ban assault weapons. We can and should pass hate-crime legislation. We can and should stiffen penalties for domestic violence. But until we work to change the hearts of men and women, until we teach tolerance and respect, until we talk about what divides us, until we figure out what unites us, our efforts will be futile.”