Hate Crimes

WASHINGTON -- Democrats urged Congress yesterday to approve new protections for gays and lesbians by expanding federal laws that provide harsher penalties for crimes motivated by race, religion or national origin.Advocates of gay rights and other supporters of expanding the hate crimes legislation to cover sexual orientation, disability or gender were outraged to discover last week that Republicans had deleted the provision from a spending bill funding the Commerce, Justice and State departments.

As the Baltimore City Council moves to deter attacks on gays and lesbians through a local hate-crimes law, a state delegate who sponsored Maryland's hate-crimes statute wants to expand the law to include sexual orientation.State law covers racial and ethnically based hate crimes.Del. Samuel I. Rosenberg, a Baltimore Democrat, said he is drafting a bill to be introduced in the General Assembly in January to amend the state law in the wake of Matthew Shepard's killing Oct. 12 in Laramie, Wyo. The university student, 21, was killed in part because he was gay.Since last week's incident, gays and lesbians across the country have been calling on local, state and federal lawmakers to draft measures to help deter attacks on people because of their sexual orientation.

WASHINGTON -- The Senate yesterday approved a long-debated measure that would expand the federal hate-crime law to cover violence against gays and, in an unusual gambit to make it difficult for President Bush to carry out his veto threat, attached it to a defense bill. Supporters of the hate-crime legislation mustered the minimum 60 votes they needed to overcome a threatened filibuster. The House approved the bill earlier this year as a stand-alone measure, but neither chamber appears to have the votes to override a veto.

BRYANS ROAD -- South Hampton is a pristine development with an all-American vibe: The townhouses and single-family homes have tidy green lawns and blossoming trees out front; there are a tennis court and a playground, and the black and white families who live here look after each other. So it was a shock when residents awoke one day last August to find that cars, homes and a mailbox had been defiled with racist graffiti. Vandals had spray-painted whole sides of cars, shattered car windows and written "KKK" on houses.

WASHINGTON -- Conservatives used to joke grimly about liberal thought police. Now, if President Clinton gets his way, the nightmare will edge closer to reality.Mr. Clinton wants to expand the federal "hate crimes" statute, which automatically heightens the punishment of thugs who select victims partly on the basis of race, religion, sex or national origin. The president wants to expand the roster of presumptive victims to include the handicapped and non-heterosexuals.The theory is that government has a duty to look out for the least among us and that the people singled out have drawn short straws in life's lottery.

LOS ANGELES -- California Attorney General Bill Lockyer released statewide statistics yesterday on 1998 hate crimes before announcing the creation of an advisory commission and a new strategy to combat the problem.Lockyer was flanked by politicians, law enforcement and civil rights leaders as he spoke at a news conference at the city's Museum of Tolerance."Whether hatemongers use gun violence, arson or other illegal means to spread their poison, we in law enforcement and communities throughout California must respond swiftly and make it clear that such behavior will not be tolerated," Lockyer said.

THE CASE against John William King was open and shut. The victim's blood was found on his sandals. A motive was as clear as the racist tattoos that adorn almost every inch of his torso.The jury deliberated a little more than two hours Tuesday before finding King guilty in the June 7 murder of James Byrd Jr. The Jasper, Texas man was killed because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But mostly, as a black man, he was killed because he was the wrong color.Three white men who said they were giving Mr. Byrd a ride home beat him, chained him to their truck, and dragged him until his head was ripped off. It was one of this nation's most heinous racial crimes since lynchings went out of style.

THE SAVAGE murder of Matthew Shepard last October culminated a startling and disturbing recent epidemic in hate crimes: an African-American man dragged to his death in Texas; a wave of church bombings across the South; synagogue desecrations in New England; and brutal murders of gay men in Buffalo, N.Y., Richmond, Va., and rural Alabama. While it's still under investigation, Tuesday's school shootings near Denver appear to be a hate crime, with minority students among those targeted by the gunmen.

WASHINGTON -- With the sting of anti-Semitic violence fresh in the nation's consciousness, dozens of Jewish leaders pressed President Clinton last night to do more to monitor, infiltrate and thwart hate groups around the nation.The 28 leaders of Jewish groups who met with Clinton for nearly two hours last night had previously planned the White House meeting. But the shooting this week of five people at a Jewish community center in Los Angeles gave urgency to the discussion. The suspect, Buford O. Furrow Jr., who is also charged in the killing of a Filipino-American postal worker, is a white supremacist who authorities say targeted Jews.

Neglecting roads won't protect nature or ease congestionDavid Bingham's letter, "More highways bring more sprawl, congestion" (Aug. 15), indicates that the writer is either uninformed on transportation matters or prejudiced by an unreasonable fear that any roadway improvement will result in "overdevelopment."Neglecting our roads will neither reduce congestion nor improve the environment. If we want people to locate and remain in "existing developed areas," as Mr. Bingham suggests, we must provide a transportation network that supports that choice.

When people pack assault rifles at presidential forums and town-hall meetings dissolve into shouting matches, it's easy to imagine such anger spilling over into the nation's simmering stew of racial prejudice. A day after a self-proclaimed white supremacist was arrested in Baltimore for attempted murder in an assault on a 76-year-old black man, law enforcement officials and politicians expressed concern Wednesday that the tenor of current politics could prompt an increase in hate crimes.

So far, authorities believe James von Brunn, the Maryland man accused of killing a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, acted alone. But the anti-Semitic and racist views he has expressed in decades of rants - in court testimony, on his Web site and in a self-published book - represent the convictions of a deeply rooted community of extremists now taking advantage of technology to attract new recruits. At least 13 such outfits now operate in Maryland, according to trackers of hate groups.

A 19-year-old member of Baltimore Hebrew Congregation was being held yesterday after being charged in connection with the spray-painting of a swastika and the word "Nazis" at the synagogue in Pikesville. Matthew Ian Saunders, whose family worships at the temple, and two other young Jewish men - Daniel Alexander Diaz, 19, and a 17-year-old who was not identified by police - were charged with two counts of destruction of property and damaging the property of a religious entity. The charges involve spraying offensive graffiti early Sunday on a sign at Baltimore Hebrew Congregation on Park Heights Avenue and at another Pikesville institution, Beth Tfiloh Congregation High School on Old Court Road.

Like many working mothers, Laura S. Kiessling divides her weekends among swim meets, football practices and volleyball games. But unlike most, she often gets calls from police looking to go over the facts of the county's latest homicide. Or perhaps they're calling to ask her whether an act of vandalism could be considered a hate crime. As one of the county's two deputy state's attorneys, Kiessling is involved in some way with nearly every major criminal case. And as a 10-year veteran of a team of prosecutors who go after child abusers and sex offenders, she travels the state giving workshops on how to interview children.

Politicians are often accused of being irrelevant. But rarely has a group of them been so intent on proving that charge than the senators who voted last week for the "Matthew Shepard Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007." This bill is supposed to be a brave and pioneering piece of legislation. According to the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights organization, "Congress has taken a historic step forward and moved our country closer to the realization that all Americans, including the GLBT [gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender]

WASHINGTON -- The Senate yesterday approved a long-debated measure that would expand the federal hate-crime law to cover violence against gays and, in an unusual gambit to make it difficult for President Bush to carry out his veto threat, attached it to a defense bill. Supporters of the hate-crime legislation mustered the minimum 60 votes they needed to overcome a threatened filibuster. The House approved the bill earlier this year as a stand-alone measure, but neither chamber appears to have the votes to override a veto.

BRYANS ROAD -- South Hampton is a pristine development with an all-American vibe: The townhouses and single-family homes have tidy green lawns and blossoming trees out front; there are a tennis court and a playground, and the black and white families who live here look after each other. So it was a shock when residents awoke one day last August to find that cars, homes and a mailbox had been defiled with racist graffiti. Vandals had spray-painted whole sides of cars, shattered car windows and written "KKK" on houses.

A recent spate of hate crimes, in which a chemical was used to scorch swastikas, "white power" or "WP" into eight Ellicott City front lawns, could be a juvenile "prank," the county's acting Police Chief William J. McMahon said yesterday. "It's been my experience that a lot of these cases involve kids who don't know better or should know better," McMahon said, adding that if that were the case, it would not minimize the seriousness of the crime or the pain that the vandalism has caused victims.

Leaders of a race relations council say they hope the jail sentence ordered this week for a teenager convicted of a hate crime, as well as the judge's punishment and harsh words, send the intended message that hate crimes are unacceptable. And though the victim said he has put the incident behind him, convicted teenager Alan Lee Davis might find his notoriety more lasting in cyberspace as part of a planned initiative by the state's attorney's office. On Monday, Davis, a white 19-year-old, was ordered jailed for 10 days for vandalism of his African-American neighbor's car. The damage included a profanity-ridden racial epithet scraped into the finish.

A group of Anne Arundel County officials, community groups and residents distraught about recent hate crimes and the distribution of white supremacist leaflets created a race relations umbrella organization this week to coordinate how to deal with the sensitive subject. The Race Relations Coordinating Council will start by putting together a rapid-response plan for teams to work with victims of hate crimes and communities where fliers have been distributed. It also will begin planning for town hall-style meetings in the fall.