Tackling hate crimes
Garland orders review of how DOJ can combat hate crimes.
WASHINGTON — Attorney General Merrick Garland on Tuesday ordered a review of how the Justice Department can best deploy its resources to combat hate crimes during a surge in incidents targeting Asian Americans.
Garland issued a departmentwide memo announcing the 30-day review, citing the “recent rise in hate crimes and hate incidents, particularly the disturbing trend in reports of violence against members of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community since the start of the pandemic.”
The memo comes as a number of police departments across the country are reporting an uptick in hate crimes and attacks on Asian Americans and as lawmakers and community leaders have been increasingly outspoken about the need for the federal government to do more to combat hate crimes.
In July, about 150 members of Congress called on the Justice Department to take action against crimes targeting Asian Americans, and last week a bipartisan group of former U.S. attorneys penned an open letter expressing support for the Asian American community and condemning acts of hatred against any group.
For federal officials to combat the trend, federal prosecutors and law enforcement officials should place an emphasis on investigating and prosecuting hate crimes, while increasing community outreach, Garland said. They should also focus on improving the FBI’s collection of data on hate crimes, which is “critical to understanding the evolving nature and extent of hate crimes and hate incidents in all their forms,” he wrote in the memo.
A main criticism from lawmakers and civil rights groups has been that the U.S. government vastly undercounts hate crimes because the FBI’s reporting system is voluntary. In some states, just 5% of police departments reported any hate crimes last year.
The review is aimed at determining howthe Justice Department can better prioritize investigations and prosecutions, increase and track reporting of hate crimes and other incidents that could violate federal law, and use civil remedies to address bias incidents that don’t amount to federal hate crimes.
It will also seek to ensure each of the 94 U.S. attorney’s offices across the country has resources dedicated to identifying hate crimes and bias incidents and review how the department can better engage with communities, among other things.
The call for a review comes one day after a vicious attack on an Asian American woman as she walked to church in New York City.
A lone assailant was seen on surveillance video late Monday morning, kicking the 65-year-old woman in the stomach, knocking her to the ground and stomping on her face, all as police say he shouted anti-Asian slurs and told her, “you don’t belong here.”
The attack happened outside an apartment building two blocks from Times Square. Two workers inside the building who appeared to be security guards were seen on the video witnessing the attack but failing to come to the woman’s aid.
The attacker was able to walk away while onlookers watched, the video showed.
NewYork City Mayor Bill de Blasio called the video of the attack “absolutely disgusting and outrageous.
“I don’t care who you are, I don’t care what you do, you’ve got to help your fellow New Yorker,” de Blasio said Tuesday.
Mayoral candidate Andrew Yang, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, said the victim “could easily have been my mother.” He, too, criticized the bystanders, saying their inaction was “exactly the opposite of what we need here in New York City.”
The attack comes weeks after a mass shooting in Atlanta that left eight people dead, six of them women of Asian descent. The surge in violence has been linked in part to misplaced blame for the coronavirus and former President Donald Trump’s use of terms like “Chinese virus.”
This year in New York City there have been 33 hate crimes with an Asian victim as of Sunday, police said. There were 11 such attacks by the same time last year.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo called Monday’s attack “horrifying and repugnant,” and he ordered a state police hate crimes task force to offer its assistance to the NYPD. No arrests have been made.
The womanwas hospitalized with serious injuries. She was in stable condition Tuesday, a hospital spokesperson said.
According to video footage of the assault Monday, two people who appeared to be security guards walked into the frame and one of them closed the building door as the woman was on the ground.
The property developer and manager of the building, Brodsky Organization, wrote on Instagram that it was aware of the assault and said staff members who witnessed it were suspended pending an investigation.
The head of the union representing building workers disputed allegations that the door staff failed to act. He said the union has information that they called for help immediately.
According to Stop AAPI Hate, more than 3,795 incidents were reported to the organization from March 19, 2020, to Feb. 28.