WASHINGTON, D.C. — Friday, a broad coalition of civil and human rights, religious, and educational organizations, including The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, sent a letter to the Department of Justice (DOJ) to recommend concrete steps the Department can and should take in the wake of the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville and elsewhere. The letter also highlights the priorities of the broad coalition, which we hope will assist the Department in developing its plan of action following the June 29 hate crime summit.
The letter states in part:
White supremacy is un-American and unacceptable. The right to free speech is a core value, but the promotion of hate should be vehemently rejected.
The racism, anti-Semitism, and violent bigotry on display in Charlottesville last month underlines an essential fact of the DoJ summit: that hate crimes are a national problem, deserving of priority attention. We believe the federal government has an essential leadership role to play in confronting acts of violence motivated by prejudice – and in promoting anti-bias initiatives for schools, communities, and law enforcement officials. We likewise welcome the Attorney General’s commitment to investigate the very disturbing series of murders of transgender women of color and other transgender individuals across the country.
The letter makes recommendations across four areas listed below in part:
Address Recent Actions that Undercut the Mission
Rescind policies that undermine faith, trust, and relationships with communities of color such as the reversal of policies to reform our justice system and the return to the failed policies of the war on drugs, limitations on consent decrees, demanding local law enforcement enforce immigration law, threatening funding for “sanctuary cities,” mass deportation and targeting of immigrants, proposed defunding of Planned Parenthood, support for a voter ID law ruled intentionally racially discriminatory, the formation of an “election integrity” task force that appears designed to promote voter suppression, the signing of an executive order that endorses discrimination under the guise of religious liberty, the withdrawal of guidance clarifying Title IX protections for transgender students, barring transgender individuals from serving in our Armed Forces, the filing of briefs seeking to limit the protections provided in federal and state law against anti-LGBT discrimination, and the appointment of unqualified or inexperienced officials who appear intent on retreating from statutory civil and human rights agency priorities.
Department of Justice Leadership Initiatives
In close cooperation with law enforcement organizations and civil rights and religious groups with interest and expertise in combatting hate violence, the DoJ should create a website – similar to the extraordinarily helpful www.stopbullying.gov – to serve as a one-stop portal for the general public, law enforcement officials, educators, public officials, media and other key stakeholders. The new website, should aggregate federal resources about effective hate crime laws, prevention programs, best police policies and procedures and community awareness-building practices, victim service resources, law enforcement training initiatives, and help in identifying agency contacts that can assist in ancillary issues arising from hate crimes (such as immigration issues and security for houses of worship).
Improve Federal Hate Crime Data Collection
DoJ should incentivize and encourage state and local law enforcement agencies to more comprehensively collect and report hate crimes data to the FBI, with special attention devoted to large underreporting law enforcement agencies that either have not participated in the HCSA program at all or have incorrectly reported zero hate crimes.
Legislative and Administrative Recommendations
To complement effective responses to hate violence, DoJ should promote anti-bias education, hate crime prevention, and properly crafted anti-bullying, cyberbullying, and harassment education and training initiatives. While some of these actions are protected free speech, understanding this context and creating effective responses is critical to hate crime prevention.
Improving Training, Outreach, Investigations, and Prosecutions
The Department should plan additional regional training sessions – focused on jurisdictions that are underreporting hate crimes and where incidents appear to be on the rise – to enhance law enforcement’s ability to recognize, investigate, and report accurate data on hate crimes, as well as to build community trust and help educate and engage the public in combatting hate crimes. The Department should highlight the availability of the FBI’s hate crime training manual that included particularized attention to identifying and combatting hate crimes directed against marginalized, targeted communities, including LGBT people, Muslims, Arabs, Sikhs, and Hindus.
To read the full letter go here.
