The Department of Justice (DOJ) sent a letter (pdf) to officials yesterday suggesting non-mandatory improvements in the way that the Suffolk County, N.Y., Police Department (SFPD) investigates hate crimes and other practices. The preliminary findings letter was part of a DOJ investigation of the department’s “patterns and practices” in the wake of the 2008 murder of immigrant Marcelo Lucero by a gang of white toughs.

Lucero’s murder by teenagers who had regularly engaged in the ethnic hunting parties they termed “beaner-jumping” shone a light on a community of immigrants who felt they were under siege, subjected to anti-immigrant violence and largely ignored or shunted aside by the police department. It also brought out the way that leading officials in the county had regularly demonized Latino immigrants.

The DOJ’s preliminary findings comported closely with those of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which published a September 2009 report on the situation entitled “Climate of Fear: Latino Immigrants in Suffolk County, N.Y.” Our report described not only how large numbers of Latinos in Suffolk County were subjected to hate crimes and other abuse, but also how many Latinos felt that SFPD officers ignored or belittled them, often declining to take reports after complaints were made. It also discussed the role of hate groups in the country and, especially, high-level public officials in contributing to an atmosphere of anti-immigrant hate — but those areas were outside the scope of the DOJ investigation. ( continue to full post… )

A North Carolina convenience store was heavily damaged in a middle-of-the-night fire apparently started this week by an arsonist who sprayed hate graffiti marking the anniversary of 9-11. It is the latest in a string of violent crimes, including murders, where the victims are Sikhs – apparently mistaken as Muslims by the hate crime perpetrators. ( continue to full post… )

An Independence woman allegedly helped others in 2006 to vandalize and set fire to a biracial man’s mobile home because they wanted him out of their neighborhood. A federal grand jury indicted Teresa Witthar, 43, on seven counts Wednesday for allegedly conspiring to violate the man’s civil rights by threatening and intimidating him because of his race or color.

A Bay Point heroin dealer has been sentenced to 13 years for fatally stabbing a Pittsburg man he wrongly suspected had stolen Harley-Davidson motorcycle parts from a fellow gang member’s garage. Van Quinliven, 47, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter for attacking 35-year-old Ricky Mendoza last year. Quinliven is a member of the CoCo Boys, an Aryan street gang with strong prison ties.

Prosecutors in Muscogee County, Ga., indicted a man for assault they allege is connected to the neo-Nazi National Alliance. Authorities say that Michael Carothers, 31, allegedly pulled up alongside an African-American man who was walking and pepper sprayed him. Carothers is known for passing out National Alliance literature, and is facing up to 20 years in prison for the attack.

A man in Portland, Ore., has been charged with a hate crime for allegedly firebombing a mosque in Corvallis, Ore. Cody Crawford is accused of the attack on the mosque, only a block away from his home, which had once been attended by a suspected attempted bomber.

A lesbian couple in Harlan County, Ky., is asking the federal government to investigate a possible hate crime against them. The couple alleges that while they attended a Fourth of July fireworks display with their family, including their children, a group of people began shooting fireworks at them, burning one victim’s grandmother. After one victim’s father attempted to approach the group, people in the crowd began to attack her and her partner, resulting in serious injuries to both.

Police in Port Orange, Fla., are searching for a grandmother accused of kidnapping her grandson, and who may be dangerous. According to police, Laurine Sue Arnold, 49, is believed to be a “sovereign citizen” and may be uncooperative if found. Arnold was allegedly not allowed to see her grandson, and is also wanted on an unrelated charge of resisting arrest.

Authorities in Waterloo, Iowa, have announced that they will not seek hate crimes charges in the death of a 19-year-old African-American teen. The victim was allegedly beaten in front of a friend’s house by a group of individuals, and later died at a local hospital. The friends of the victim claim it was a hate crime due to his being called gay slurs. Police say previous animosities between the two sides caused the taunting and fight.

The unveiling of a monument to the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington, D.C., later this month and the trial of an alleged extremist accused of planting a bomb on the route of an MLK Day unity parade in Spokane, Wash., were set to coincide – until Friday.

Would fairness and justice – hallmarks promoted by the late civil rights leader – be served if the trial of Kevin William Harpham started the same week as the King was being honored nationally for his historic speech during the 1963 March on Washington? U.S. District Judge Justin Quackenbush wondered aloud in court on Friday.

This year’s weeklong 48^th anniversary of the King speech will be capped on Sunday, Aug. 28, with the unveiling of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial at the National Mall. The MLK event will be televised nationally on networks such as CNN, TV One and B.E.T., and other major networks are expected to have reports through the week.

“Is it fair to commence a trial in this matter at this time?’’ the judge asked from the bench at a pretrial hearing, preparing for Harpham’s Aug. 22 trial in Spokane. ( continue to full post… )

Anti-Latino hate crimes in California spiked up by almost 50% last year, the state’s attorney general’s office reported Wednesday. That dramatic rise, from 81 such crimes in 2009 to 119 in 2010, followed a decade of declines.

The numbers may be indicative of a renewed national rise in hate crimes directed at Latinos, who are often assumed to be undocumented immigrants. Nationally, FBI hate crime statistics showed a 40% rise in such crimes between 2003 and 2007, but that was followed by decreases in 2008 and 2009. The national numbers for the year 2010 are not expected to be released until November of this year.

The national hate crime numbers are notoriously sketchy, and only give a very rough indication of trends in hate crimes. However, many experts consider California particularly good at reporting hate crimes, so that state’s statistics are considered much more accurate than most others’. California, along with Arizona, has been the scene of much conflict between native Americans and immigrants, and if that conflict is heating up there, a similar pattern may be developing nationally. ( continue to full post… )

Several Washington, D.C., police officers could lose their jobs because they refused to take an on-scene report after a violent attack on five lesbians July 30 that police classified as a hate crime two days later.

“I was appalled when I heard about the incident and the conduct of the officers,” police chief Cathy Lanier said in a statement.  The officers’ actions “are being investigated thoroughly,” she added.

The investigation could take up to four months and end in the officers’ dismissal, Lanier said at a meeting with gay activists on Friday, A. J. Singletary, chair of Gays and Lesbians Opposing Violence (GLOV), told Hatewatch. Singletary attended the meeting, which had been set up a few weeks earlier to discuss growing concerns about police laxity in responding to LGBT complaints of harassment and assaults. ( continue to full post… )

The trial of a Connecticut man on sexual assault charges has taken a bizarre turn into a constitutional debate. John McGowan, a former mayoral candidate and public access TV host, is accused of sexually assaulting a woman during a game of strip poker. McGowan said he was a member of the “sovereign citizen” group Republic for the united States, which rejects the U.S. government as illegitimate.

Police in Ventura County, Calif., have arrested a man for a hate crime and assault with a deadly weapon. Patrick Fitzgerald, 24, allegedly called people derogatory racial slurs, and then got into a fight with another man, which led to a third bystander getting punched.

A Billings, Mont., resident was sentenced to three years in prison for a hate crime. Jason Lee Paullin, 35, earlier pleaded guilty to malicious intimidation for threatening an African-American man with his dog, chasing him, and yelling racial slurs at him.

Four suspects in Arroyo Grande, Calif., are in custody for burning a cross outside the home of an African-American woman. The group, led by Jason Kahn, 36, and three others stole a cross from a local Lutheran church and burned it in front of the house of a random black family.  The group, allegedly meth users and possible white supremacists, are claiming they burned the cross as a memorial to Kahn’s father, a meth addict shot by police in 1994.

The former leader of the reportedly white supremacist Invaders Motorcycle Club has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for conspiracy to manufacture narcotics. Timothy “Beefy” Bartruff was found guilty last year for conspiring with another man in a meth production operation that spanned several states.

A California man on trial for assaulting a gay man has been convicted of felony assault and committing a hate crime. Nicholas Klopp, who reportedly subscribed to white supremacist views, was accused of making derogatory sexually-oriented comments towards a man and then attacking him at a birthday party where some attendees were gay.

The anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church has announced that it will protest marriage equality in New York on Sunday. The group says it will picket several areas in New York City including marriage bureaus and Governor Andrew Cuomo’s local office.

An Oregon white supremacist was arrested for selling hashish to an undercover investigator. Michael Conway, 30, attempted to sell two pounds of hashish worth around $18,000 to the investigator.

White supremacist Mark Anthony Stroman was executed Wednesday evening for his post-9/11 revenge spree. That spree left two South Asian men dead and one Bangladeshi man wounded in acts of revenge for the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Police in Colorado Springs, Colo., are investigating the second possible anti-gay hate crime in a month. Two homeless men were reportedly stabbed as their assailants made anti-gay slurs. This follows an earlier incident in which at least one man was beaten because he was thought to be gay.

Two New Mexico men have pled guilty to federal hate crime charges for their part in the branding of a Navajo man. Paul Beebe, 27, and Jesse Sanford, 25, admitted to drawing sexually and racially offensive pictures on 22-year-old Vincent Kee, and then branding him with a swastika. Kee reportedly has fetal alcohol syndrome and was considered an easy target. Beebe and Sanford will reportedly receive up to 8 ½ years in prison for the crime.

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