The U.S. Justice Department and Cedar Rapids law enforcement and community agencies in Iowa, has hosted a forum on Jan. 30, to discuss about hate crimes and bias incidents targeting Indian-American, other South Asians, as well as Arabs and other Muslim communities.
Leaders from the Indian-American organizations, including Sikhs and Muslims, joined the forum. Representatives from the Linn County Attorney and Sheriff’s Offices, the Cedar Rapids Police Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Cedar Rapids Civil Rights Commission, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Iowa attended the forum.
“Today’s meeting was an opportunity to discuss the topic of hate crimes in a safe environment,” said United States Attorney Kevin W. Techau. “Hate crimes represent an attack not just on the individual victim but also on the victim’s community,” Techau emphasized. “The impact is broad because these crimes send a message of hate and violence to entire ethnic and religious groups.”
Techau said, “We are committed to working with all communities to address the issue by working to prevent hate crimes as well as investigate and prosecute hate crimes whenever and wherever necessary.”
The CRS, operating under the Hate Crimes Protection Act, is authorized to work with communities to help them develop the capacity to prevent and respond more effectively to the violent hate crimes committed on the basis of actual or perceived race, color, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, or disability.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Tony Morfitt provided the information on the federal statutes that criminalize various types of hate crimes. He gave the history of the federal hate crime law and the recent expansion of the groups that are protected by federal hate crime laws such as Sikhs and Hindus.
Morfitt emphasized that the defining characteristic of a federal hate crime is that the actions must have been motivated by hate and that an individual cannot be found guilty federally unless the government proves the person acted “because of” the victim’s status as a member of a protected group. For example, Morfitt pointed to the case of United States of America vs Randy Metcalf, where the government has on last year proved at trial that a Dubuque, Iowa resident had assaulted an African American man in a local bar because of his race.
By Premji
