Local Law
Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act reintroduced

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)