D.C. hate-crime prosecutions up

Activists had said U.S. attorney often failed to prosecute.

WASHINGTON — Hate-crime prosecutions rose in the District of Columbia in 2019 after plummeting to their lowest point in at least a decade, according to an analysis by The Washington Post.

As of Dec. 25, the U.S. attorney’s office had charged seven incidents from 2019 as hate crimes, compared with five in 2017 and 2018 combined.

The increase was welcomed by local officials and activists, who criticized the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Jessie Liu, after The Post revealed this summer that hate-crime prosecutions had fallen to record lows while hate-crime reports were at record highs.

“I’m heartened to see that they are prosecuting more hate crimes,” said Stephania Mahdi of the DC Anti-Violence Project. “I hope it continues.”

The up tick comes as momentum builds to strengthen the city’s hate-crime law, which Liu has said is too vague.

But activists and elected officials also warn that they have yet to see the transparency promised by Liu. And the increase in hate-crime prosecutions could be overshadowed by another rise in suspected hate crimes in the capital in 2019. The District of Columbia already had the highest per capita rate of any major U.S. city.

“It’s underwhelming to try to celebrate an increase of a handful of cases being prosecuted as hate crimes when we are seeing this dramatic increase,” said D.C. Council member Charles Allen, D-Ward 6.

The U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment because it is still compiling its own statistics for 2019, a spokeswoman said. At a community forum this summer, Liu said she had hired additional personnel to focus on hate crimes.

The District of Columbia is the only place in the country where local crimes are prosecuted by the U.S. attorney’s office, whose leader is appointed by the president. The setup makes it hard to hold prosecutors accountable, especially in a city where Donald Trump won just 4% of the vote, advocates said.

Of the record 113 cases referred by D.C. police as suspected hate crimes in 2017 and 2018, the U.S. attorney’s office only charged five as bias-related crimes, The Post found. None of the five has resulted in a hate-crime conviction. One case was dropped completely, while three others ended in convictions but not for hate crimes. The fifth case is set for trial in 2020.

Prosecutors took a more aggressive approach in 2019, especially since The Post’s investigation was published in August. Five of the seven cases from 2019 were filed as hate crimes since then, D.C. Superior Court records show.