NOM BLOG

Maggie Gallagher: Is Political Pressure Keeping DC Police From Enforcing Hate Crimes Law?

 

Like the Anti-Defamation League, and New York Daily News columnist James Kirchick, Maggie Gallagher asks a key question: why won't the police call a politically motivated bias crime a bias crime?

"...So why hasn't the [FRC] shooter been charged with a hate crime?

The Family Research Council opposes hate crimes laws, but that should have nothing to do with whether a law on the books gets enforced equally. Bias crimes are based on the theory that the victims of a bias crime are not just the individual harmed, but all others in the class intended to be terrorized by the crime.

Is political pressure in liberal D.C. keeping the police from enforcing the law?

I ask this question in part for a personal reason. The FRC shooting came a week after a package addressed to me personally showed up in the National Organization for Marriage offices filled with feces and hate and used condoms. (I have stepped down from the NOM board, but apparently the guy who dropped off the package isn't keeping up with the latest.)

According to NOM office workers who were there at the time, the police wanted to investigate it as a potential hate crime. The police LGBT hate crimes division was called to the scene (odd, because obviously the hatred thus expressed against me and NOM was not directed at LGBT people) and told the cops not to investigate it as a hate crime. The cops tried to argue with them, but no deal.

In at least two instances, to my direct knowledge, a crime directed at a person or organization who opposes gay marriage was not investigated by D.C. cops as a bias crime.

A nasty package is a minor event. A shooter who intended mass murder is deadly serious.

Together they make up a pattern.

Do we have to wait for a third incident before the police of the District of Columbia, which is ultimately controlled by Congress, act to make sure the laws are enforced equally for all?" -- TownHall

5 Comments