Jan 23, 2009  |  By: Lou Chibbaro Jr.  | COMMENTS     

D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty and Police Chief Cathy Lanier agreed to increase the city’s efforts to fight anti-gay hate crimes, but the mayor expressed reluctance to issue a formal public statement condemning anti-gay violence, according to officials of the local group Gays & Lesbians Opposing Violence.

Fenty and Lanier met with GLOV’s two co-chairs last Friday at Lanier’s office in D.C. police headquarters on Indiana Avenue, N.W., at GLOV’s request. Acting Lt. Brett Parson, who oversees the police’s Gay & Lesbian Liaison Unit, also attended the meeting.

“Mayor Fenty opened the meeting with a request for actionable suggestions on how the D.C. government could address the issue,” said GLOV co-chair Chris Farris, “but would not commit to making a public statement acknowledging and condemning the violence, although we pressed hard for that.”

Farris and GLOV’s other co-chair, Todd Metrokin, said Fenty and Lanier were receptive to several other recommendations from GLOV, including one calling on the mayor and the city’s schools superintendent to set “measurable goals” for reducing anti-gay and anti-transgender harassment and bullying by students against other students at public schools.

The mayor also agreed to immediately arrange for his office to comply with a longstanding but little known requirement that the D.C. mayor submit to the City Council an annual report on hate crimes in the city.

D.C. Council member Phil Mendelson (D-At-Large) has said no mayor has complied with the requirement by producing such a report for more than a decade, despite the fact that the annual reports are required by law.

Metrokin said Parson joined the chief in explaining the department’s existing training programs for new recruits and veteran officers on the subjects of hate crimes and relations with the gay and transgender communities.

“I feel that Chief Lanier understands the issue and is truly interested in improving the performance of the MPD,” said Metrokin. “And we assured both her and the mayor that we are also doing our part by re-educating our community on safety issues and encouraging reporting.”

Metrokin said Fenty and Lanier also agreed to the group’s recommendation that they help facilitate a meeting between GLOV and the new U.S. Attorney for D.C., who will be appointed by President-elect Barack Obama. The U.S. Attorney’s office serves as the city’s chief prosecutor for serious crimes.

GLOV has expressed concern that the U.S. Attorney’s office under its current head, Jeffrey Taylor, dropped charges against a private security guard who shouted anti-gay names and allegedly threw a brick that narrowly missed hitting two gay men walking home from a gay bar.

GLOV has also complained that the U.S. Attorney’s office hasn’t been aggressive enough in prosecuting an 18-year-old man charged with involuntary manslaughter in the September beating death of Tony Randolph Hunter. Hunter, a gay man, died from injuries he received from an assault that occurred while he and a friend walked from their car to a gay bar near Ninth and N streets, N.W.

Lanier agreed to keep GLOV up to date on police training programs related to hate crimes, Metrokin said. He said she also made a commitment to carry out a plan she announced in 2007 to keep the department’s Gay & Lesbian Liaison Unit’s central office intact in Dupont Circle while assigning gay and lesbian officers to serve as liaisons to the GLLU at each of the department’s seven districts.

But, according to a GLOV statement about the meeting with Fenty and Lanier, the chief did not agree to a GLOV recommendation that she restore the number of officers at the GLLU to the level it maintained a little over a year ago. At least two officers have left the GLLU through attrition since that time.

Lanier has said that due to changing priorities within the department, she had no immediate plans to replace the officers.

Gay activist Peter Rosenstein said he was concerned that Lanier has not kept previous commitments to maintain the GLLU’s staffing level and expand the unit in the manor she outlined in her meeting with GLOV.

“That hasn’t happened,” he said. “I want to applaud GLOV for having the meeting with Chief Lanier and Mayor Fenty. My concern is that they seem to have not gotten the majority of their requests and most inexplicably the mayor continues to refuse to speak out on the violence against the GLBT community.”

Spokespersons for the mayor’s office and Lanier could not be immediately reached for comment.