One Year Later: COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act a promising work in progress
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Rhonda Sonnenberg, SPLC Senior Staff Writer | Read the full piece here
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Friend,
When three women of Korean descent were shot by a gunman at a Dallas
hair salon last week, it was a stark reminder of the violence that has
targeted the Asian community amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The attack, which the women survived, came almost one year after
President Biden signed the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act
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, an effort to address hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific
Islanders (AAPI) fueled by escalating anti-Asian rhetoric -
including the words of former President Donald Trump - since the
virus emerged from China.
Signed on May 20, 2021, the act focuses on strengthening relationships
between police and the AAPI community through cultural competency and
language training and improved hate-crime data collection. Though the
federal government has been collecting data on hate crimes since 1991,
reporting from thousands of state and local law enforcement agencies
is voluntary, resulting in significant gaps. The expectation is that
better data on the nature and magnitude of the problem will bolster
hate crime prevention and prosecution
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. While the act specifically addresses anti-AAPI crime, all hate crime
victims will benefit from funding incentives for state and local law
enforcement authorities to identify, report and respond to hate
crimes.
For the Southern Poverty Law Center, the legislation was an important
step forward after decades of work combating the threat of hate crime.
One year later, the act continues to hold great promise amid ongoing
work by advocacy organizations such as the SPLC and the Leadership
Conference on Civil and Human Rights
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.
"The COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act was the single most significant
piece of legislation to improve federal hate crime data since the Hate
Crimes Statistics Act of 1990
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," said Michael Lieberman, the SPLC's senior policy
counsel for hate and extremism.
Still, because compliance by law enforcement agencies is voluntary,
their reporting is incomplete and haphazard.
"There have been consistent reporting gaps for 30 years,"
said Lieberman, who led the SPLC's advocacy in support of the
COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act and was among advocates who helped shape
outreach and training under the Hate Crimes Statistics Act during his
years as the Anti-Defamation League's
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Washington, D.C., counsel.
The problem is clear: Out of the more than 15,000 agencies that
participated in the FBI data collection effort in 2020, only about
2,400 - less than 16% - reported one or more hate crimes.
Every other agency, including almost 70 cities with populations over
100,000, reported
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zero hate crimes or did not report any data to the FBI at all.
The FBI defines a hate crime as a "criminal offense against a
person or property motivated in whole or in part by an
offender's bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual
orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity."
The COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act uses the carrot-and-stick approach to
induce local and state law enforcement agencies to fight hate. To
receive a piece of the hundreds of millions of dollars in funding the
U.S. Department of Justice
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(DOJ) allocates annually, an agency must demonstrate a good faith
effort to improve hate crime training and the collection and reporting
of hate crime data. If they don't, the DOJ may seek repayment of
the grants.
"Data drives policy, so as our data gets better we will be in a
better position to prevent, deter and, if necessary, respond to hate
crimes, because we can then focus and allocate resources to hot
spots," Lieberman said.
What is apparent on the act's anniversary is that there is still
much work ahead, if the latest data and analyses are any indication.
Hate crimes against all Americans rose 24.4% in 16 major U.S. cities
in 2021 over the previous year. However, across 21 cities there was a
224% rise of hate crimes against victims of Asian descent during the
same period, from 114 to 369. These figures were provided to the SPLC
by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism
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at California State University in San Bernardino from its forthcoming
publication Report to the Nation, which analyzes FBI data.
"COVID isn't going away," said SPLC President and
CEO Margaret Huang, who attended the signing ceremony for the COVID-19
Hate Crimes Act and is the daughter of a Chinese immigrant father and
an American-born mother. "Trump was an instigator, but the
pandemic is still here. ... Anti-AAPI sentiment isn't going
away."
In March, the SPLC submitted policy recommendations
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as part of a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on countering rising
hate crime. Among them: that the DOJ enlist all 94 U.S. attorneys to
help promote the reporting of hate crimes and civil rights violations
in their jurisdictions. The SPLC also called for the designation of a
person or team to lead these efforts and serve as a liaison between
police and AAPI communities.
READ MORE
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In solidarity,
Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center
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