By Marvin G. Cortner
Editor

The U.S. Justice Department June 30 sponsored a forum on cultural sensitivity and hate crimes at the Robert Guevara Community Center in Buenaventura Lakes, after the agency received a request from a local resident for such a meeting.

Representatives from the U.S. Justice Department, Florida Attorney General’s Office, the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office, the F.B.I. and various nonprofits spent several hours in the predominantly Hispanic/Puerto Rican community discussing ways the various government agencies handle discrimination and hate crimes. Members of the public asked questions and shared accounts of personal experiences.

Forum panelist William C. Daniels, law enforcement coordinator and community resource specialist for the U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Attorney’s Office, Tampa, said there is a big difference between someone expressing a bias and committing a hate crime.

“There first has to be a crime, something prosecutable, and then the victim had to be selected based on a protected class,” Daniels said, protected class refers to race, gender, color, religious belief, sexual orientation, disability or national origin and homeless (in Florida and a number of other states). “We have many incidents where people are offended but not the victim of a crime.”

Daniels said 50 percent of hate crimes are committed by “young thrill seekers” and 40 percent by people who react to a threatening situation based on some hidden personal bias that comes out.

“One percent of the hate crimes are committed by persons that belong to organized hate groups who are on a mission for God or who are responding to a higher calling,” Daniels said.

In talking about bias, Daniels said all people have them and that everyone has to deal with them at some time or another. The key, he said, is how people respond in a given situation. It is that response, not the bias, he said, for which people are held accountable.

Panelist Danille R. Carroll, director, Office of Civil Rights, Office of the Florida Attorney General, said that in Florida when a crime is committed with a bias, the bias becomes a “penalty enhancer.”

“If the crime was a third-degree felony, it becomes a second degree penalty – it moves up one level,” she said.

Carroll said many hate crimes against members of the gay community go unreported because victims, for various reasons, are reluctant to report them.

“You may not be out to your family or friends, maybe you are embarrassed about it,” Carroll said.

An incident can be a hate crime if the bias is “incorrect,” Carroll said, such as when someone commits a crime against a Muslim believed to be Cuban.

Carroll said one key in documenting a hate crime is that local authorities have to make sure that police reports record what actually happened.

“Police have to put down exactly what is said (by victims or witnesses) for the prosecutor to see,” Carroll said.

Lt. Mike Fisher, representing the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office on the forum panel, said his department has investigated four incidents so far this year in the county considered to be hate crimes. The four hate crime incidents were a car burglary Feb. 27, criminal mischief complaints on April 8 and June 21 and a battery June 14.

Fisher, who is in charge of the county’s emergency response team, said hate speech – despite being despicable – is not a crime. He shared an experience where he was on duty during an Aryan Nation demonstration in Orlando.

“I had to stand there and listen to hate speech – it stinks, but that is what our Constitution protects,” Fisher said.

Panel member Wilfredo Amr Ruiz, executive director of the American Muslims for Emergency & Relief in Miami Beach, said many Muslims are frustrated that local law enforcement agencies and the Justice Department don’t concentrate more on prevention of hate crimes and to be more willing to label an incident as something done due to bias.

“We still see a reluctance to use circumstantial evidence to prove a hate crime; what other reason would someone shoot up a mosque,” Ruiz said, adding that authorities also need to address the issue of hate speech.

However, panelist Randy Stephens, representing the gay, lesbian and transgender community in Central Florida, said as despicable as it may be, hate speech is still protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

“If we punish people for what they say, we lose our rights,” he said. “Yes, we have differences and ills were done in the past, we can’t correct those. We have to deal with the young at home – that is where most people learn their prejudices.”

Jasbir Singh Bhatia, representing the Sikh community in Central Florida on the panel, said he had a friend “shot dead” after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, just because the man “wore a turban.”

“Whenever there is a conflict in the world, people try to associate you with that," Bhatia said. “Education is the solution; the community has to be educated.”

The Sikh community leader related a discrimination incident that occurred earlier in his life when he was applying for an engineering job.

"I wore a turban and had a beard — I was told I didn't get an interview for that reason. That hurt lasts a long time, it is a scar on our heart," he said.

In summing up the more than two-hour discussion, Carroll said hate crimes affect the entire community.

“The hatred doesn’t stop when one group is gone from a community – it is just directed at someone else,” she said.