Dec 19, 2008  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO JR  | COMMENTS     

A D.C. police commander and two U.S. Attorney’s office prosecutors faced sharp questioning during a Dec. 12 City Council hearing on the city’s response to anti-gay hate crimes.

Council members Phil Mendelson (D-At-Large), chair of the Council’s Committee on Public Safety & the Judiciary, and David Catania (I-At-Large), a member of the committee, said they were troubled over police and prosecutor handling of at least three recent cases where gay men were attacked in Washington.

“I’m really quite disturbed in the way some of these cases have been handled in terms of police response, which I think has not been adequate,” Mendelson said.

Catania characterized as “ridiculous” a decision by the U.S. Attorney’s office to accept a claim by a defendant charged in the September beating death of Tony Randolph Hunter that Hunter provoked the attack by grabbing the defendant’s crotch. Police said a group of four youths attacked Hunter, who was gay, and a friend as they walked to a D.C. gay bar.

Council members Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) and Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), who also participated in the hearing, joined Mendelson and Catania in expressing disbelief that the U.S. Attorney’s office took nearly two months to interview Hunter’s friend, who was an eyewitness to the attack. The friend has said Hunter never touched defendant Robert Hanna, 18, and that the attack against him and Hunter was unprovoked.

Patricia Reilly, one of the two assistant U.S. Attorneys who testified at the hearing, said her office could not comment on any aspect of the Hunter case because it was pending before a grand jury.
Rodney Parks, commander of the D.C. Police Criminal Investigations Division, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Albert Herring, testified that their respective agencies take hate crimes seriously. The two said their offices have outreach programs to educate the public, police officers and prosecutors about hate crimes. Reilly also noted that her office vigorously prosecutes hate crimes.

Acting Lt. Brett Parson, who oversees the police Gay & Lesbian Liaison Unit, testified that police aggressively pursue hate crimes cases. He said that while officers on a few occasions have not classified cases as hate crimes that should have been so classified, officers are trained to recognize such cases.

Four members of Gays & Lesbians Opposing Violence said at the hearing that they know of a number of cases where police and the U.S. Attorney’s office did not appear to have properly investigated and prosecuted anti-gay hate crimes.

Chris Farris, a GLOV co-chair, said police and the U.S. Attorney’s office have “an inclination to accept homophobic defenses as fact rather than seeing incidents through the eyes of the victim.” He also expressed concerns that police weren’t classifying crimes as hate-related despite evidence that anti-gay bias was a factor in the case.

Farris said that regardless of the total number of hate crimes in the city, gay-related hate crimes have comprised between 65 percent and 75 percent of all hate crimes reported in the city. Gay-related hate crimes make up only 15 percent of all hate crimes on a national basis, he noted.