The State Attorney General's Civil Rights Commission on Hate Crimes will complete its activities for the year on October 24th when the final draft of its report is submitted to the Attorney
General. The Attorney General will release the report to the public in December. Although the report is not quite completed, some of the issues the Commission is addressing have been raised in community forums throughout
California. In its initial year, the Commission has focused its attention on how to improve hate crime reporting by the community (victims, witnesses, and community organizations to whom victims report), by schools, and by
law enforcement.
Although the Commission heard testimony citing numerous reasons why people do not report hate crimes, it also learned about programs where community agencies and networks are partnering with law
enforcement and schools to reach out to affected areas to uncover hate crimes and build trust. The Commission learned that barriers to hate crime reporting are being overcome in places where anti-hate networks operate. One
issue the Commission will have to determine is whether the state should have a role in supporting programs that are proving successful in getting people to report hate crimes.
AB 1785, by Assemblymember Antonio Villaraigosa,
requiring schools to report hate crimes was recently signed into law. However, it is likely that even with the legislation, schools will be reluctant to carry out such a mandate. In an audience survey at a forum at the
Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, more than half of the participants indicated that they would remove their child from a school that reported hate crimes. The Commission, which included a Department of Education
representative, will recommend ways to gain public support for schools that demonstrate an interest in identifying and responding to hate crimes and bias-related incidents.
There is a steady increase in the number of police
departments that report hate crimes, but there are still some holdouts. The Commission's task is to find a way to build incentives for police departments to do accurate reporting and to fill in some identified needs related
to law enforcement training, and policy formulation.
Until now, probation officers and jail and prison staff have been largely ignored in efforts to get criminal justice agencies to identify and report hate crimes. Their
training is overseen by entities that are different from those that oversee the training for police officers. They have rarely been exposed to hate crime response training. The Commission has expressed an interest in
remedying the problem.
Perhaps the most controversial issue the Commission may grapple with is that of establishing procedures for handling and reporting hate incidents and hate crimes when police are identified as the
perpetrators. Despite the incidents relating to Rodney King, Tyesha Miller, and others throughout California, a police officer has yet to be charged with committing a hate crime.
