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The Human Face of Hate Crimes
In this most diverse society on earth, each of us is a member of one or more minority — racial, religious, ethnic, cultural, national origin, or sexual. That is why all of us are affected by hate crimes. Violence motivated by bigotry has targeted many different segments of society: African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans; Jewish Americans and Arab Americans; Native Americans; recent immigrants; women; and gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, to name just a few.
Over the past few years, a number of high-profile bias-motivated murders in different parts of the country have demonstrated that hate violence affects every community — and has focused the nation's attention on this national problem.
James Byrd, Jr.
In June 1998, James Byrd, Jr., an African-American resident of Jasper, Texas, was dragged to his death on the back of a pick-up truck. His assailants had beaten Byrd severely and sprayed black paint on his face before attaching chains to his legs and dragging him 2.5 miles behind their truck. Autopsy evidence indicated that Byrd was still alive while being dragged and apparently tried to prop his head up with his elbows during the last moments of his life. As a result of the dragging, Byrd's head and arm were severed from his body and strewn along the road. His murderers left his torso in front of an African-American cemetery. In highly publicized trials, John King and Lawrence Brewer were both sentenced to death. Their subsequent appeals were denied and both remain on death row in Texas. The court sentenced Shawn Berry to life in prison. Byrd's grave has been desecrated numerous times since his burial, including as recently as May 2004, when the tombstone was broken and defaced with a racial epithet ("1998 Annual Report of the Community Relations Service," U.S. Department of Justice, http://www.usdoj.gov/crs-/pubs/fy98/p17.htm and "ADL Appalled by Desecration of James Byrd Jr.'s Grave Site," Anti-Defamation League, http://www.adl.org/-PresRele/HatCr_51/4491_51.htm).
Matthew Shepard
In October 1998 outside Laramie, Wyo., Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, was beaten and then tied to a fence and left to die. Shepard suffered at least 18 blows to the head and never regained consciousness. Prosecutors presented evidence — including comments by the attackers made while Shepard was tied to the fence — that Shepard had been singled out because he was openly gay. Russell Henderson pled guilty to felony murder and was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences without parole. Aaron McKinney was convicted of felony murder, second-degree murder, aggravated robbery, and kidnapping. After Matthew Shepard's father asked the court not to apply the death penalty, McKinney received two life sentences ("Man's Death Changed Town," The Detroit Free Press, October 8, 1999, http: //www.freep.com/news/nw/qgay8.htm).
The Smith Murders
On July 2, 1999, Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, a 21-year-old Indiana University at Bloomington student and member of the white supremacist World Church of the Creator, began a three-day racist rampage, leaving two dead and nine wounded. Beginning on a Friday evening, Smith shot and killed African-American Ricky Byrdsong, former basketball coach of Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., in front of two of his three children outside Byrdsong's Skokie, Ill., home. Smith also wounded six Orthodox Jews in drive-by shootings in the Chicago suburb. Leaving the Chicago area on Saturday, Smith traveled to Springfield and later Decatur, where he shot and non-fatally injured an African-American minister. On July 4, Smith traveled to Urbana and later Bloomington, Ind., where he gunned down Won-Joon Yoon, a Korean doctoral student set to begin his studies in computer science at Indiana University in the fall of 1999. On Monday, July 5, while fleeing the police in a high-speed chase, Smith shot himself in the head. The van he was driving crashed and he was later pronounced dead at the hospital ("Midwest Shooting Spree Ends with Apparent Suicide of Suspect" CNN.com, July 5, 1999 and "Anti-Asian Hate Crimes on the Rise," AsianWeek.com, January 12, 2000).
The Furrow Murder
In Los Angeles, a neo-Nazi sympathizer fired at least 70 rounds with a high-powered assault weapon in the lobby of the North Valley Jewish Community Center — injuring two boys, a 16-year-old teacher's aide, and a 68-year-old receptionist. The perpetrator, Buford Furrow, later murdered an Asian-American postal worker. He was sentenced to two consecutive life terms without the possibility of release, an additional 110 years in prison, and ordered to pay more than $690,000 in restitution to the victims and their families ("White Supremacist Buford Furrow Sentenced to Life Behind Bars," City Service News, March 26, 2001).
The Baumhammers Murders
On April 28, 2000, Richard Baumhammers, 34, went on a murderous shooting spree, killing five and wounding one. All of the victims were religious or ethnic minorities. Baumhammers's first victim was Anita Gordon, 63, his Jewish neighbor in Mt. Lebanon, a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Baumhammers shot Gordon in her home before setting her house on fire. Among the killer's other victims were: Anil Thakur, 31, from Bihar, India; Thao Q. Pham, 27, a resident of Castle Shannon, Pennsylvania; Ji-Ye Sun, 34, from Churchill, Penn.; and Garry Lee, 22, of Aliquippa, Penn., who was gunned down by Baumhammers in a martial arts studio. Baumhammers also shot and critically injured a sixth and final victim, Sandip Patel, 25, of Plum, Penn. During the rampage, Baumhammers fired shots into two synagogues. He painted a swastika on one of the synagogues — Beth El Congregation of the South Hills — during the rampage. On May 18, 2000, a court ruled that Baumhammers was mentally unfit to stand trial and ordered him to receive 90 days of psychiatric treatment before re-evaluation ("Shooting Rampage Suspect Will Get 90 Days of Psychiatric Treatment," Pittsburgh Post Gazette, May 19, 2000, http://www.post-gazette.com/regionstate/20000519baumhammers3.asp and "ADL Audit: Anti-Semitic Incidents Rise Slightly in U.S. in 2000. Increase Linked to Mideast Conflict," Anti-Defamation League, March 21, 2001, http://www.adl.org-/Presrele/asus_12/3776_12.asp).
Balbir Singh Sodhi
Four days after the September 11th terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., Balbir Singh Sodhi was shot and killed outside his Chevron gas station in Mesa, Ariz. Sodhi, 49, an Indian Sikh, was murdered by 42-year-old Frank Roque. According to a police investigation, Roque had spent much of the day drinking and talking about how he wanted to kill the "rag heads" who had carried out the September 11th attacks. After killing Sodhi, Roque went on to fire shots at the home of an Afghan family and also at a Lebanese-American clerk, who was unharmed. Roque was found guilty of first-degree murder, and received the death sentence ("Report on Hate Crimes & Discrimination Against Arab Americans: The Post-September 11 Backlash," American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee Research Institute, 2003).
The Stroman Murders
Mark Anthony Stroman, a white supremacist with a criminal record, murdered two men and shot a third in the span of three weeks out of revenge for the September 11th terrorist attacks. On September 15, 2001, Stroman, 32, shot Waqar Hasan, a Pakistani Muslim, in the face while the victim was working in his grocery store in Dallas, Texas. Hasan died face down on the floor of the business he owned. On September 21st, Stroman shot and blinded Raisuddin Bhuiyan, a Bangladeshi immigrant and storeowner in Dallas. Finally, on October 4, Stroman murdered Vasudev Patel, an Indian gas station owner, 49, in what he at first claimed was an armed robbery. However, security cameras showed that Stroman fled after the shooting without taking any money from the cash register. In a Dallas radio interview, Stroman confessed to the murders and was quoted as saying that he had done "what every American wanted to do but didn't. They didn't have the nerve." (The Associated Press, February 16, 2002). On April 4, 2002, Stroman received the death penalty for the killings and remains on death row in Texas ("Report on Hate Crimes & Discrimination Against Arab Americans: The Post-September 11 Backlash," American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee Research Institute, 2003).
The Yosemite Murders
On February 15, 1999, 37-year-old Cary Stayner, a handyman from El Portal, Calif., strangled Carole Sund, 43, and visiting Argentine exchange student Silvina Pelosso, 16, in their rented cabin at the Cedar Lodge Motel near Yosemite National Park. After sexually assaulting Sund's daughter, Juli, 15, Stayner brought her to a nearby river before killing her on the morning of February 16. After the killings, Stayner placed the bodies of Carole Sund and Silvina Pelosso in the trunk of their rental car, before returning later to burn incriminating evidence. Despite an extensive investigation of the murders, law enforcement officials did not arrest Stayner until he was implicated in a fourth murder. On July 21, 1999, Stayner murdered and decapitated Joie Ruth Armstrong, 26, who worked at the Yosemite Institute near the lodge where Stayner worked. In an interview with news reporters on the day of his arraignment, Stayner confessed to the killings, admitting that he had, "fantasized about killing women for the last 30 years." Despite the pleas of his parents and arguments from his defense attorneys claiming that he is mentally disturbed, Stayner was sentenced to death by lethal injection in 2002 ("Cary Stayner: Murder Among the Sequoias," http: //www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers-/predators/stayner/).
As these examples demonstrate, the federal government's annual reports on total reported incidents paint only a partial portrait of the problem. Following are more stories that convey a sense of how hate crimes victimize Americans of different races, religions, ethnic groups, and sexual orientation, as well as women.
Attacks upon African Americans
Among groups currently included in the Hate Crime Statistics Act, the greatest number of hate crimes of any kind are perpetrated against African Americans. From lynching to cross-burning and church-burning, anti-black violence has been and still remains the prototypical hate crime — an action intended not only to injure individuals but to intimidate an entire group of people. Hate crimes against African Americans have an impact upon society not only for the hurt they cause but for the history they recall, and perpetuate.
As this report went to press, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the sentencing of two Missouri men, avowed white supremacists, for participating in a June 2001 racially motivated assault at a Springfield, Mo., restaurant. Kenneth Johnson was sentenced to four years and three months for his role in the violent, racially-motivated attack on two African-American men at a Denny's restaurant in Springfield. Another defendant, Steven Heldenbrand, who cooperated with the government's prosecution, was sentenced to two years and eight months. On August 2, 2004, Michael Angelo Osorio and Mark Thomas Kooms were each sentenced to four years and three months. Michael Shane McCormack, who cooperated with the government, was sentenced to two years in prison. All five defendants had pled guilty earlier in 2004.
The following hate crimes against African Americans were compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center (http: //www.splcenter.org/intel/hatewatch/fortherecord.jsp):
Two 16-year-old teenage boys in Arlington, Wash., were charged with malicious harassment for allegedly burning a cross in an African-American man's yard (March 27, 2004).
In Sacramento, Calif., two 15-year-old students were each charged with felony conspiracy to commit murder and attempted burglary for allegedly plotting to attack black students (March 4, 2004).
Three white men, Christian Rudge, 20, Anthony Improta, 18, and Christopher Zitelli, 19, were charged with assault as a hate crime, assault and weapon charges under a 20-count indictment for allegedly assaulting a black woman and six of her friends in September in Great Kills, N.Y. (Feb. 12, 2004).
Louis J. Giannola was charged with a felony hate crime in Pinellas Park, Fla., for allegedly throwing a noose around a black teenager's neck while yelling a racial slur (January 14, 2004).
Alex Witmer, 22, received the maximum 65-year prison sentence for the 1999 racially motivated killing of a black man in Elkhart, Ind. (December 23, 2003).
Shaun Derifield, 23, was ordered to serve 37 months in prison and pay a $6,000 fine for yelling racist taunts at black teens and holding a knife to a girl's throat in Chicago, Ill., in August 2002 (November 19, 2003).
Thaddeus R. Carroll was sentenced to 18 months in prison for burning a cross in a black woman's yard in April 1999 in Phoenix, Ariz. (November 3, 2003).
Larry Webb, 41, and Nathan Mefford, 18, of Xenia, Ohio, were charged with ethnic intimidation and felonious and aggravated assault for allegedly yelling racial threats at a black man, stabbed him with a barbecue fork and hit him with a frying pan (July 13, 2003).
Jesus A. Gomez, 20, a suspected gang member, was charged with murder, two counts of attempted murder and other charges in Riverside, Calif., after he allegedly targeted and killed a 13-year-old boy because he was black (May 27, 2003).
Attacks upon Jews
At a time when anti-Semitism is surging in Europe and other parts of the world to an extent unprecedented since the end of World War II, the United States has not been immune. According to the most recent FBI Hate Crime Statistics Act data, more than 12 percent of all hate crimes reported by police agencies — and more than 65 percent of all the religion-based hate crimes — were directed at Jews or Jewish institutions.
Violent bigotry directed against Jews draws upon centuries of such assaults — from the pogroms of Eastern Europe, to the Nazi Holocaust, to the cross-burnings of the Ku Klux Klan in this country.
Historically Jews were accused of being "Christ-Killers" and were believed to be involved in different types of international conspiracy. Incredibly, on the eve of the release of Mel Gibson's controversial film "The Passion of the Christ," a poll commissioned by the Anti-Defamation League found that one in four Americans still believe that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus.
Anti-Semitism is also perpetuated by slander and relies on old stereotypes. In the days following the August 2000 nomination of Sen. Joseph Lieberman for Vice President on the Democratic ticket, anti-Semites, racists, and bigots took to the Internet to spread classical anti-Semitic stereotypes and canards — including conspiracy theories and age-old myths about Jewish control, power, and influence. For example, after the September 11th terrorist attacks, rumors by white supremacist organizations were circulated about Jewish or Israeli involvement in the attacks at the World Trade Center. In addition, in the aftermath of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster on February 1, 2003, conspiracy theories focused on Israeli crew member Col. Ilan Ramon, with many suggesting Jewish or Israeli involvement in the shuttle's destruction. In recent months, several members of Congress and a number of journalists and commentators have suggested that a group of neo-conservative Jews had driven the United States into the war in Iraq. The American public overwhelmingly rejects such conspiracy theories and scapegoating.
The Internet continues to play a substantial role in the dissemination of anti-Semitism, with hate literature being transmitted through hundreds of sites on the Web and through bulletin boards, chat rooms, and e-mail messages. Web sites operated by anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers are easily found on the Internet and can serve as an impetus for anti-Semitic incidents; for instance, anti-Semitic fliers can be downloaded from Web sites and distributed by anyone with a computer and a printer.
The following examples illustrate crimes that were directed at Jews and Jewish institutions because of their religion:
In Terre Haute, Ind., the C.A.N.D.L.E.S. (Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Lab Experiments Survivors) Holocaust Museum was destroyed by arson. No one has been yet charged in connection with this crime. ("Fire Destroys Holocaust Museum," http: //www.cnn.com/2003/US-/11/18/holocaust.museum.fire.ap, November 18, 2003).
In May 2003, Mazin Assi, a 23-year old Arab-American man, was sentenced to 5 to 15 years in prison for the attempted arson of a Bronx, N.Y., synagogue, the first to be convicted under New York's new hate crime law. The firebombing occurred on the eve of Yom Kippur and hours before the state crime bill was enacted. The sentencing judge called the firebombing "un-American." ("Judge Rips, then Jails Synagogue Firebomber," Daily News, May 2, 2003).
In Wichita, Kan., vandals toppled more than 40 headstones in the Hebrew Congregation of Wichita cemetery during the week of the annual Holocaust memorial commemoration. Nearby cemeteries of other denominations were untouched ("Vandals Strike Again at Hebrew Cemetery," The Wichita Eagle, April 9, 2003).
In April 2003, the Hillel Jewish Student Center at the University of California — Berkeley was vandalized with anti-Israel and anti-Semitic graffiti and the glass front door was smashed in with a cement block ("ADL: Antisemitic Incidents Soar in N. California," The Forward, April 4, 2003).
On July 5, 2002, at the Los Angeles International Airport, a distraught Egyptian-born man, Hasham Mohamed Hadayet, went on a shooting spree at the El Al Israel Airlines ticket counter, killing Yaakov Aminov, an Israeli-born American, and Victoria Hen, an El Al ticket agent, and wounding four others before Israeli security guards shot him dead. The FBI is now investigating this act as an act of terrorism ("Los Angeles Airport Shooting Kills 3," http: //www.cnn.com/2002/US/07/04/-la.airport.shooting/ July 5, 2002).
On April 16, 2002, arsonists set fire to the B'Nai Zion Synagogue in Key West, Fla., causing $700,000 in damage. Three months later, vandals desecrated a Jewish section of the city's cemetery marked B'Nai Zion, knocking over eight headstones ("Crime at Synagogue, Cemetery Vexes Town," The St. Petersburg Times, August 1, 2002).
Attacks upon Hispanics
In California and throughout the Southwest, long-existing antagonisms against Hispanics have been aggravated by the furor over immigration. In November 1994, 59 percent of California voters approved a statewide referendum proposal, Proposition 187, which declared undocumented immigrants ineligible for most public services, including public education and non-emergency health care.
As with attacks upon African Americans and Jews, attacks upon Hispanics are part of a history of hatred. In California and throughout the Southwest, there have been recurring periods of "nativism," when not only newcomers but longtime U.S. citizens of Mexican descent have been blamed for social and economic problems. During the Depression of the 1930s, citizens and non-citizens of Mexican descent were the targets of mass deportations, with a half million "dumped" across the border in Mexico. In the early 1950s, a paramilitary effort, with the degrading name "Operation Wetback," deported tens of thousands of Mexicans from California and several other southwestern states. The historian Juan Ramon Garcia describes the climate of fear and hatred that existed from the 1930s through the '50s:
"The image of the mysterious, sneaky, faceless 'illegal' was once again stamped into the minds of many. Once this was accomplished, 'illegals' became something less than human, with their arbitrary removal being that much easier to justify and accomplish."
While illegal immigration and its impact on public services is a legitimate concern, much of the recent debate has echoed the nativist rhetoric of earlier eras. For instance, Ruth Coffey, the founder of Stop Immigration Now, told the Los Angeles Times: "I have no intention of being the object of 'conquest,' peaceful or otherwise, by Latinos, Asians, Blacks, Arabs, or any other group of individuals who have claimed my country." And Glenn Spencer, president of Voices of Citizens Together, which collected 40,000 signatures to qualify California's Proposition 187 for the ballot, said: "We have to take direct and immediate action to preserve this culture and this nation we have spent two centuries building up."
During the emotionally charged debate over Proposition 187, hate speech and violent acts against Latinos increased dramatically. And in the aftermath of the approval of Proposition 187, civil rights violations against Latinos went on the upswing, with most of the cases involving United States citizens or permanent legal residents. All in all, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area alone, the County Human Relations Commission documented an 11.9 percent increase in hate crimes against Latinos in 1994.
Bigotry and hate crimes against Hispanics are not confined to California and the Southwest. From the Midwest, to the Northeast, to Florida, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, and immigrants from other countries in Central and South America have been the targets of harassment and violence.
Civil rights organizations charge that Hispanic Americans are often targets of a growing trend of abuse by private citizens and local law enforcement officials. They attribute the increasing abuse in part to the hostile political climate in which anyone who is perceived as an immigrant becomes a target for "enforcement" activities that are excessive, inappropriate, and often illegal.
Here are several examples of hate crimes against Hispanics in the past several years:
In May 2004, a group of white teenagers in Canton, Ga., beat a 55-year-old Guatemalan day laborer after offering him a job. The teens drove him to a remote area, where he was asked to empty trash bags out of the back of the truck. As the man got to work one of the boys began to hit him with a large stick. They robbed him of his money and aband-oned him. The victim was temporarily disabled from working. Several other day laborers in the area have reported being similarly victimized ("Attack raises racism worries: Georgia teens accused of beating man," Columbia Daily Tribune, May 11, 2004, www.showmenews.com).
Several police departments confirmed the distribution of anti-immigrant and anti-minority flyers throughout Denver, Colo., and other nearby towns in October 2003. The flyers were made and distributed by the National Alliance, a white supremacist group. The flyers also asked for the deportation of all immigrants. This incident was only one of a series of racist leafleting (News and Services, News and Services/Noticias y Servicios: October 2003, 2003, www.newsandservices.com).
A Latino cultural landmark in San Diego, Calif., was vandalized in May 2002 with anti-Mexican and derogatory messages. In Spanish, the vandals wrote on two murals "down with Mexico" and "house of whores." The murals are painted on the walls of Centro Cultural de la Raza, which was founded in 1970 during the Chicano movement. This incident was one of several similarly targeted crimes to occur in the area in a span of a few weeks (Leonel Sanchez, "Latino Landmark Vandalized," San Diego Union Tribune, May 3, 2002, www.signonsandiego.com).
Since March 2002, the dead bodies of nine immigrant men were discovered in a 20-square-mile area in Maricopa County, Ariz., close to the United States-Mexican border. Some of the victims were shot at close range with semiautomatic weapons. The occurrence of these violent acts has coincided with a rise in armed vigilante activity in the area by anti-immigration extremists (Anti-Defamation League, Border Disputes: Armed Vigilantes in Arizona, 2003, www.adl.org).
The Human Face of Hate Crimes
In this most diverse society on earth, each of us is a member of one or more minority — racial, religious, ethnic, cultural, national origin, or sexual. That is why all of us are affected by hate crimes. Violence motivated by bigotry has targeted many different segments of society: African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans; Jewish Americans and Arab Americans; Native Americans; recent immigrants; women; and gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, to name just a few.
Over the past few years, a number of high-profile bias-motivated murders in different parts of the country have demonstrated that hate violence affects every community — and has focused the nation's attention on this national problem.
James Byrd, Jr.
In June 1998, James Byrd, Jr., an African-American resident of Jasper, Texas, was dragged to his death on the back of a pick-up truck. His assailants had beaten Byrd severely and sprayed black paint on his face before attaching chains to his legs and dragging him 2.5 miles behind their truck. Autopsy evidence indicated that Byrd was still alive while being dragged and apparently tried to prop his head up with his elbows during the last moments of his life. As a result of the dragging, Byrd's head and arm were severed from his body and strewn along the road. His murderers left his torso in front of an African-American cemetery. In highly publicized trials, John King and Lawrence Brewer were both sentenced to death. Their subsequent appeals were denied and both remain on death row in Texas. The court sentenced Shawn Berry to life in prison. Byrd's grave has been desecrated numerous times since his burial, including as recently as May 2004, when the tombstone was broken and defaced with a racial epithet ("1998 Annual Report of the Community Relations Service," U.S. Department of Justice, http://www.usdoj.gov/crs-/pubs/fy98/p17.htm and "ADL Appalled by Desecration of James Byrd Jr.'s Grave Site," Anti-Defamation League, http://www.adl.org/-PresRele/HatCr_51/4491_51.htm).
Matthew Shepard
In October 1998 outside Laramie, Wyo., Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, was beaten and then tied to a fence and left to die. Shepard suffered at least 18 blows to the head and never regained consciousness. Prosecutors presented evidence — including comments by the attackers made while Shepard was tied to the fence — that Shepard had been singled out because he was openly gay. Russell Henderson pled guilty to felony murder and was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences without parole. Aaron McKinney was convicted of felony murder, second-degree murder, aggravated robbery, and kidnapping. After Matthew Shepard's father asked the court not to apply the death penalty, McKinney received two life sentences ("Man's Death Changed Town," The Detroit Free Press, October 8, 1999, http: //www.freep.com/news/nw/qgay8.htm).
The Smith Murders
On July 2, 1999, Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, a 21-year-old Indiana University at Bloomington student and member of the white supremacist World Church of the Creator, began a three-day racist rampage, leaving two dead and nine wounded. Beginning on a Friday evening, Smith shot and killed African-American Ricky Byrdsong, former basketball coach of Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., in front of two of his three children outside Byrdsong's Skokie, Ill., home. Smith also wounded six Orthodox Jews in drive-by shootings in the Chicago suburb. Leaving the Chicago area on Saturday, Smith traveled to Springfield and later Decatur, where he shot and non-fatally injured an African-American minister. On July 4, Smith traveled to Urbana and later Bloomington, Ind., where he gunned down Won-Joon Yoon, a Korean doctoral student set to begin his studies in computer science at Indiana University in the fall of 1999. On Monday, July 5, while fleeing the police in a high-speed chase, Smith shot himself in the head. The van he was driving crashed and he was later pronounced dead at the hospital ("Midwest Shooting Spree Ends with Apparent Suicide of Suspect" CNN.com, July 5, 1999 and "Anti-Asian Hate Crimes on the Rise," AsianWeek.com, January 12, 2000).
The Furrow Murder
In Los Angeles, a neo-Nazi sympathizer fired at least 70 rounds with a high-powered assault weapon in the lobby of the North Valley Jewish Community Center — injuring two boys, a 16-year-old teacher's aide, and a 68-year-old receptionist. The perpetrator, Buford Furrow, later murdered an Asian-American postal worker. He was sentenced to two consecutive life terms without the possibility of release, an additional 110 years in prison, and ordered to pay more than $690,000 in restitution to the victims and their families ("White Supremacist Buford Furrow Sentenced to Life Behind Bars," City Service News, March 26, 2001).
The Baumhammers Murders
On April 28, 2000, Richard Baumhammers, 34, went on a murderous shooting spree, killing five and wounding one. All of the victims were religious or ethnic minorities. Baumhammers's first victim was Anita Gordon, 63, his Jewish neighbor in Mt. Lebanon, a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Baumhammers shot Gordon in her home before setting her house on fire. Among the killer's other victims were: Anil Thakur, 31, from Bihar, India; Thao Q. Pham, 27, a resident of Castle Shannon, Pennsylvania; Ji-Ye Sun, 34, from Churchill, Penn.; and Garry Lee, 22, of Aliquippa, Penn., who was gunned down by Baumhammers in a martial arts studio. Baumhammers also shot and critically injured a sixth and final victim, Sandip Patel, 25, of Plum, Penn. During the rampage, Baumhammers fired shots into two synagogues. He painted a swastika on one of the synagogues — Beth El Congregation of the South Hills — during the rampage. On May 18, 2000, a court ruled that Baumhammers was mentally unfit to stand trial and ordered him to receive 90 days of psychiatric treatment before re-evaluation ("Shooting Rampage Suspect Will Get 90 Days of Psychiatric Treatment," Pittsburgh Post Gazette, May 19, 2000, http://www.post-gazette.com/regionstate/20000519baumhammers3.asp and "ADL Audit: Anti-Semitic Incidents Rise Slightly in U.S. in 2000. Increase Linked to Mideast Conflict," Anti-Defamation League, March 21, 2001, http://www.adl.org-/Presrele/asus_12/3776_12.asp).
Balbir Singh Sodhi
Four days after the September 11th terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., Balbir Singh Sodhi was shot and killed outside his Chevron gas station in Mesa, Ariz. Sodhi, 49, an Indian Sikh, was murdered by 42-year-old Frank Roque. According to a police investigation, Roque had spent much of the day drinking and talking about how he wanted to kill the "rag heads" who had carried out the September 11th attacks. After killing Sodhi, Roque went on to fire shots at the home of an Afghan family and also at a Lebanese-American clerk, who was unharmed. Roque was found guilty of first-degree murder, and received the death sentence ("Report on Hate Crimes & Discrimination Against Arab Americans: The Post-September 11 Backlash," American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee Research Institute, 2003).
The Stroman Murders
Mark Anthony Stroman, a white supremacist with a criminal record, murdered two men and shot a third in the span of three weeks out of revenge for the September 11th terrorist attacks. On September 15, 2001, Stroman, 32, shot Waqar Hasan, a Pakistani Muslim, in the face while the victim was working in his grocery store in Dallas, Texas. Hasan died face down on the floor of the business he owned. On September 21st, Stroman shot and blinded Raisuddin Bhuiyan, a Bangladeshi immigrant and storeowner in Dallas. Finally, on October 4, Stroman murdered Vasudev Patel, an Indian gas station owner, 49, in what he at first claimed was an armed robbery. However, security cameras showed that Stroman fled after the shooting without taking any money from the cash register. In a Dallas radio interview, Stroman confessed to the murders and was quoted as saying that he had done "what every American wanted to do but didn't. They didn't have the nerve." (The Associated Press, February 16, 2002). On April 4, 2002, Stroman received the death penalty for the killings and remains on death row in Texas ("Report on Hate Crimes & Discrimination Against Arab Americans: The Post-September 11 Backlash," American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee Research Institute, 2003).
The Yosemite Murders
On February 15, 1999, 37-year-old Cary Stayner, a handyman from El Portal, Calif., strangled Carole Sund, 43, and visiting Argentine exchange student Silvina Pelosso, 16, in their rented cabin at the Cedar Lodge Motel near Yosemite National Park. After sexually assaulting Sund's daughter, Juli, 15, Stayner brought her to a nearby river before killing her on the morning of February 16. After the killings, Stayner placed the bodies of Carole Sund and Silvina Pelosso in the trunk of their rental car, before returning later to burn incriminating evidence. Despite an extensive investigation of the murders, law enforcement officials did not arrest Stayner until he was implicated in a fourth murder. On July 21, 1999, Stayner murdered and decapitated Joie Ruth Armstrong, 26, who worked at the Yosemite Institute near the lodge where Stayner worked. In an interview with news reporters on the day of his arraignment, Stayner confessed to the killings, admitting that he had, "fantasized about killing women for the last 30 years." Despite the pleas of his parents and arguments from his defense attorneys claiming that he is mentally disturbed, Stayner was sentenced to death by lethal injection in 2002 ("Cary Stayner: Murder Among the Sequoias," http: //www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers-/predators/stayner/).
As these examples demonstrate, the federal government's annual reports on total reported incidents paint only a partial portrait of the problem. Following are more stories that convey a sense of how hate crimes victimize Americans of different races, religions, ethnic groups, and sexual orientation, as well as women.
Attacks upon African Americans
Among groups currently included in the Hate Crime Statistics Act, the greatest number of hate crimes of any kind are perpetrated against African Americans. From lynching to cross-burning and church-burning, anti-black violence has been and still remains the prototypical hate crime — an action intended not only to injure individuals but to intimidate an entire group of people. Hate crimes against African Americans have an impact upon society not only for the hurt they cause but for the history they recall, and perpetuate.
As this report went to press, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the sentencing of two Missouri men, avowed white supremacists, for participating in a June 2001 racially motivated assault at a Springfield, Mo., restaurant. Kenneth Johnson was sentenced to four years and three months for his role in the violent, racially-motivated attack on two African-American men at a Denny's restaurant in Springfield. Another defendant, Steven Heldenbrand, who cooperated with the government's prosecution, was sentenced to two years and eight months. On August 2, 2004, Michael Angelo Osorio and Mark Thomas Kooms were each sentenced to four years and three months. Michael Shane McCormack, who cooperated with the government, was sentenced to two years in prison. All five defendants had pled guilty earlier in 2004.
The following hate crimes against African Americans were compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center (http: //www.splcenter.org/intel/hatewatch/fortherecord.jsp):
Two 16-year-old teenage boys in Arlington, Wash., were charged with malicious harassment for allegedly burning a cross in an African-American man's yard (March 27, 2004).
In Sacramento, Calif., two 15-year-old students were each charged with felony conspiracy to commit murder and attempted burglary for allegedly plotting to attack black students (March 4, 2004).
Three white men, Christian Rudge, 20, Anthony Improta, 18, and Christopher Zitelli, 19, were charged with assault as a hate crime, assault and weapon charges under a 20-count indictment for allegedly assaulting a black woman and six of her friends in September in Great Kills, N.Y. (Feb. 12, 2004).
Louis J. Giannola was charged with a felony hate crime in Pinellas Park, Fla., for allegedly throwing a noose around a black teenager's neck while yelling a racial slur (January 14, 2004).
Alex Witmer, 22, received the maximum 65-year prison sentence for the 1999 racially motivated killing of a black man in Elkhart, Ind. (December 23, 2003).
Shaun Derifield, 23, was ordered to serve 37 months in prison and pay a $6,000 fine for yelling racist taunts at black teens and holding a knife to a girl's throat in Chicago, Ill., in August 2002 (November 19, 2003).
Thaddeus R. Carroll was sentenced to 18 months in prison for burning a cross in a black woman's yard in April 1999 in Phoenix, Ariz. (November 3, 2003).
Larry Webb, 41, and Nathan Mefford, 18, of Xenia, Ohio, were charged with ethnic intimidation and felonious and aggravated assault for allegedly yelling racial threats at a black man, stabbed him with a barbecue fork and hit him with a frying pan (July 13, 2003).
Jesus A. Gomez, 20, a suspected gang member, was charged with murder, two counts of attempted murder and other charges in Riverside, Calif., after he allegedly targeted and killed a 13-year-old boy because he was black (May 27, 2003).
Attacks upon Jews
At a time when anti-Semitism is surging in Europe and other parts of the world to an extent unprecedented since the end of World War II, the United States has not been immune. According to the most recent FBI Hate Crime Statistics Act data, more than 12 percent of all hate crimes reported by police agencies — and more than 65 percent of all the religion-based hate crimes — were directed at Jews or Jewish institutions.
Violent bigotry directed against Jews draws upon centuries of such assaults — from the pogroms of Eastern Europe, to the Nazi Holocaust, to the cross-burnings of the Ku Klux Klan in this country.
Historically Jews were accused of being "Christ-Killers" and were believed to be involved in different types of international conspiracy. Incredibly, on the eve of the release of Mel Gibson's controversial film "The Passion of the Christ," a poll commissioned by the Anti-Defamation League found that one in four Americans still believe that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus.
Anti-Semitism is also perpetuated by slander and relies on old stereotypes. In the days following the August 2000 nomination of Sen. Joseph Lieberman for Vice President on the Democratic ticket, anti-Semites, racists, and bigots took to the Internet to spread classical anti-Semitic stereotypes and canards — including conspiracy theories and age-old myths about Jewish control, power, and influence. For example, after the September 11th terrorist attacks, rumors by white supremacist organizations were circulated about Jewish or Israeli involvement in the attacks at the World Trade Center. In addition, in the aftermath of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster on February 1, 2003, conspiracy theories focused on Israeli crew member Col. Ilan Ramon, with many suggesting Jewish or Israeli involvement in the shuttle's destruction. In recent months, several members of Congress and a number of journalists and commentators have suggested that a group of neo-conservative Jews had driven the United States into the war in Iraq. The American public overwhelmingly rejects such conspiracy theories and scapegoating.
The Internet continues to play a substantial role in the dissemination of anti-Semitism, with hate literature being transmitted through hundreds of sites on the Web and through bulletin boards, chat rooms, and e-mail messages. Web sites operated by anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers are easily found on the Internet and can serve as an impetus for anti-Semitic incidents; for instance, anti-Semitic fliers can be downloaded from Web sites and distributed by anyone with a computer and a printer.
The following examples illustrate crimes that were directed at Jews and Jewish institutions because of their religion:
In Terre Haute, Ind., the C.A.N.D.L.E.S. (Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Lab Experiments Survivors) Holocaust Museum was destroyed by arson. No one has been yet charged in connection with this crime. ("Fire Destroys Holocaust Museum," http: //www.cnn.com/2003/US-/11/18/holocaust.museum.fire.ap, November 18, 2003).
In May 2003, Mazin Assi, a 23-year old Arab-American man, was sentenced to 5 to 15 years in prison for the attempted arson of a Bronx, N.Y., synagogue, the first to be convicted under New York's new hate crime law. The firebombing occurred on the eve of Yom Kippur and hours before the state crime bill was enacted. The sentencing judge called the firebombing "un-American." ("Judge Rips, then Jails Synagogue Firebomber," Daily News, May 2, 2003).
In Wichita, Kan., vandals toppled more than 40 headstones in the Hebrew Congregation of Wichita cemetery during the week of the annual Holocaust memorial commemoration. Nearby cemeteries of other denominations were untouched ("Vandals Strike Again at Hebrew Cemetery," The Wichita Eagle, April 9, 2003).
In April 2003, the Hillel Jewish Student Center at the University of California — Berkeley was vandalized with anti-Israel and anti-Semitic graffiti and the glass front door was smashed in with a cement block ("ADL: Antisemitic Incidents Soar in N. California," The Forward, April 4, 2003).
On July 5, 2002, at the Los Angeles International Airport, a distraught Egyptian-born man, Hasham Mohamed Hadayet, went on a shooting spree at the El Al Israel Airlines ticket counter, killing Yaakov Aminov, an Israeli-born American, and Victoria Hen, an El Al ticket agent, and wounding four others before Israeli security guards shot him dead. The FBI is now investigating this act as an act of terrorism ("Los Angeles Airport Shooting Kills 3," http: //www.cnn.com/2002/US/07/04/-la.airport.shooting/ July 5, 2002).
On April 16, 2002, arsonists set fire to the B'Nai Zion Synagogue in Key West, Fla., causing $700,000 in damage. Three months later, vandals desecrated a Jewish section of the city's cemetery marked B'Nai Zion, knocking over eight headstones ("Crime at Synagogue, Cemetery Vexes Town," The St. Petersburg Times, August 1, 2002).
Attacks upon Hispanics
In California and throughout the Southwest, long-existing antagonisms against Hispanics have been aggravated by the furor over immigration. In November 1994, 59 percent of California voters approved a statewide referendum proposal, Proposition 187, which declared undocumented immigrants ineligible for most public services, including public education and non-emergency health care.
As with attacks upon African Americans and Jews, attacks upon Hispanics are part of a history of hatred. In California and throughout the Southwest, there have been recurring periods of "nativism," when not only newcomers but longtime U.S. citizens of Mexican descent have been blamed for social and economic problems. During the Depression of the 1930s, citizens and non-citizens of Mexican descent were the targets of mass deportations, with a half million "dumped" across the border in Mexico. In the early 1950s, a paramilitary effort, with the degrading name "Operation Wetback," deported tens of thousands of Mexicans from California and several other southwestern states. The historian Juan Ramon Garcia describes the climate of fear and hatred that existed from the 1930s through the '50s:
"The image of the mysterious, sneaky, faceless 'illegal' was once again stamped into the minds of many. Once this was accomplished, 'illegals' became something less than human, with their arbitrary removal being that much easier to justify and accomplish."
While illegal immigration and its impact on public services is a legitimate concern, much of the recent debate has echoed the nativist rhetoric of earlier eras. For instance, Ruth Coffey, the founder of Stop Immigration Now, told the Los Angeles Times: "I have no intention of being the object of 'conquest,' peaceful or otherwise, by Latinos, Asians, Blacks, Arabs, or any other group of individuals who have claimed my country." And Glenn Spencer, president of Voices of Citizens Together, which collected 40,000 signatures to qualify California's Proposition 187 for the ballot, said: "We have to take direct and immediate action to preserve this culture and this nation we have spent two centuries building up."
During the emotionally charged debate over Proposition 187, hate speech and violent acts against Latinos increased dramatically. And in the aftermath of the approval of Proposition 187, civil rights violations against Latinos went on the upswing, with most of the cases involving United States citizens or permanent legal residents. All in all, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area alone, the County Human Relations Commission documented an 11.9 percent increase in hate crimes against Latinos in 1994.
Bigotry and hate crimes against Hispanics are not confined to California and the Southwest. From the Midwest, to the Northeast, to Florida, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, and immigrants from other countries in Central and South America have been the targets of harassment and violence.
Civil rights organizations charge that Hispanic Americans are often targets of a growing trend of abuse by private citizens and local law enforcement officials. They attribute the increasing abuse in part to the hostile political climate in which anyone who is perceived as an immigrant becomes a target for "enforcement" activities that are excessive, inappropriate, and often illegal.
Here are several examples of hate crimes against Hispanics in the past several years:
In May 2004, a group of white teenagers in Canton, Ga., beat a 55-year-old Guatemalan day laborer after offering him a job. The teens drove him to a remote area, where he was asked to empty trash bags out of the back of the truck. As the man got to work one of the boys began to hit him with a large stick. They robbed him of his money and aband-oned him. The victim was temporarily disabled from working. Several other day laborers in the area have reported being similarly victimized ("Attack raises racism worries: Georgia teens accused of beating man," Columbia Daily Tribune, May 11, 2004, www.showmenews.com).
Several police departments confirmed the distribution of anti-immigrant and anti-minority flyers throughout Denver, Colo., and other nearby towns in October 2003. The flyers were made and distributed by the National Alliance, a white supremacist group. The flyers also asked for the deportation of all immigrants. This incident was only one of a series of racist leafleting (News and Services, News and Services/Noticias y Servicios: October 2003, 2003, www.newsandservices.com).
A Latino cultural landmark in San Diego, Calif., was vandalized in May 2002 with anti-Mexican and derogatory messages. In Spanish, the vandals wrote on two murals "down with Mexico" and "house of whores." The murals are painted on the walls of Centro Cultural de la Raza, which was founded in 1970 during the Chicano movement. This incident was one of several similarly targeted crimes to occur in the area in a span of a few weeks (Leonel Sanchez, "Latino Landmark Vandalized," San Diego Union Tribune, May 3, 2002, www.signonsandiego.com).
Since March 2002, the dead bodies of nine immigrant men were discovered in a 20-square-mile area in Maricopa County, Ariz., close to the United States-Mexican border. Some of the victims were shot at close range with semiautomatic weapons. The occurrence of these violent acts has coincided with a rise in armed vigilante activity in the area by anti-immigration extremists (Anti-Defamation League, Border Disputes: Armed Vigilantes in Arizona, 2003, www.adl.org).
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