A bill expanding
the definition of hate crimes and the government's
authority to track and fight them was reintroduced late
Tuesday in the U.S. House of Representatives, which
last year passed the bill only to see it die in the
Senate.
The Local Law
Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act was introduced by
Democratic representative John Conyers of Michigan and
Republican representative Mark Kirk of Illinois, along
with more than 100 other members of Congress. The
Senate is expected to introduce a bipartisan companion
bill next month.
The legislation
adds sexual orientation, gender, and gender identity to
local hate crimes that the U.S. Justice Department has the
authority to investigate. It makes grants available to
states and localities for training law enforcement and
for investigating and prosecuting these hate crimes.
It has been
approved separately in the House and Senate several times
since 2000, but final passage has always been blocked by the
House's then-Republican leaders.
"Each year,
thousands of Americans are violently attacked just
because they are black, female, Christian, or gay. These
crimes not only harm individuals, but they terrorize
entire communities," Joe Solmonese, president of the
gay rights group Human Rights Campaign, said in a
written statement. "It's the responsibility of our
government to protect all Americans. After more than a
decade of delay, it's time for Congress to provide
local police and sheriffs' departments with the tools
and resources they need to put away society's most vicious
criminals."
Because there is
no federal law mandating localities to report hate
crimes, many do not, and gay rights advocates believe the
true extent of anti-LGBT violence, in particular, goes
underreported.
"This bill is an
appropriate and measured response to [an] unrelenting
and underaddressed problem," the Matthew Shepard
Foundation said in a written statement.
The Federal
Bureau of Investigation's statistics are now based on
voluntary reporting. They show that 7,163 hate crimes were
reported in 2005, the most recent year for which
statistics are available. Violent crimes based on
sexual orientation made up 14.2% of all hate crimes in
2005, with 1,017 reported for the year, according to the
FBI.
But major cities
like New York and Phoenix and states like Alabama and
Mississippi did not report, Civilrights.com asserts, making
the statistics incomplete. (The Advocate)
