Bias crimes found in all areas of city

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Thursday, May 4, 2006

Bias crimes found in all areas of city
Top 2 motivators cited are race, sexual orientation

By ATHIMA CHANSANCHAI
P-I REPORTER

Is this a Seattle that looks familiar to you, or does it feel foreign?

In the University District, two white men yell, "Look at the chinks!" from a balcony and spit at two young Asian Americans.


		Joshua Trujillo / P-I
	Ken Molsberry, a city computer systems and data analyst, Wednesday shows a report on 2000-05 bias crimes in Seattle.

In Fremont, a white man in a pickup truck drives by an African American cab driver, yells out an obscenity and then comes back flashing a gun.

In Belltown, near the Space Needle, a Hispanic man rams his vehicle into a car containing two young South Asian men, referring to them as "Arabs."

In Pioneer Square, a man approaches another man standing at a bus stop and hits him after saying, "This is a gay bashing day!"

These and other incidents like them show up more than 400 times over a five-year period in reports obtained from the Seattle Police Department by Ken Molsberry, a computer systems and data analyst for the Seattle City Attorney's Office. Today, in partnership with the Seattle LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) Community Center, Molsberry is releasing the information in a report, "Bias Crimes and Incidents in Seattle: 2000 to 2005: An analysis by type of bias and neighborhood."

The purpose of the study, Molsberry wrote, is to "dispel the misconception that there is any neighborhood in Seattle in which bias attacks are not a problem."

Although he is an employee of the city, he made public disclosure requests and analyzed the findings as a private citizen. Along the way, he partnered with Kristina Armenakis, coordinator of the Hate Crime Awareness Project -- a partnership of the Seattle LGBT Community Center & Safe Schools Coalition. She edited the report and copied and distributed it.

"Knowing about a problem is the first step in solving it," Molsberry wrote in the study. "And while local law enforcement is well aware of the problem -- and the pattern -- of bias attacks in Seattle, citizens generally are not."

Molsberry found 403 bias-motivated attacks throughout the city -- including verbal and physical threats or harm based on protected classifications such as race, religion, sexual orientation and national origin. Such incidents included graffiti, threatening phone calls and racial slurs -- anything that rose to the level prompting a call to the police. His report does not break down which races were targeted the most.

"Unfortunately, as a society we are still dealing with bias-based incidents. Every major city in the country grapples with it, and Seattle's no different," said Marty McOmber, spokesman for Mayor Greg Nickels. "The city and the police take it very seriously. There's no excuse for hate crimes in this city."

The two biggest motivators for attacks, according to the report, were race (142 incidents) and sexual orientation (119 incidents). Other biases, in decreasing order, included religion, national origin, political ideology and gender identity.

Sgt. Deanna Nollette of the Seattle Police Department's media relations department verified the accuracy of the raw data obtained by Molsberry, but cautioned that the numbers may skew "artificially high due to the reporting system."

That system, she said, accounts for all reports of bias-motivated attacks that may or may not lead to actual criminal charges. The police data include a field that elaborates on the incident and makes it clear that at least the perception of bias was present.

Rob Jacobs, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, said even if something doesn't rise to the level of a bias crime, it still can have a detrimental effect. He said, "Getting a phone call from somebody you don't know who says something incredibly racist ... all of a sudden that sense of security completely disappears."

Jacobs said his office received 212 calls last year complaining of some kind of discrimination in Seattle.

If anything, Molsberry said, the numbers of calls to the police could be on the low side because of underreporting, a problem echoed by community leaders. Fear of retribution, language barriers and mistrust of authority were all factors they mentioned that could prevent victims from coming forward.

'In every neighborhood'

The raw police data categorized the incidents by precinct, but Molsberry broke down the incidents by neighborhoods based on maps used by Seattle's Department of Neighborhoods, the City Neighborhood Council and the Police Department. He found the area with the highest number of attacks to be the First Hill/Capitol Hill and Eastlake area, with 76 over that five-year period. That area had the highest number of attacks based on race and sexual orientation, but no neighborhood was immune from incidents.

map

"The fact that hate crimes were in every neighborhood is disturbing, but not surprising," said Diane Narasaki, head of the Asian Pacific Islander Coalition in Seattle. She said the report supports anecdotal evidence that's traveled through the Asian Pacific Islander community, the largest minority group in King County at 15 percent of the population.

Those active in minority communities said the findings reinforce their anecdotal evidence of widespread bias-motivated incidents and their belief that one minority's problem is all minorities' problem.

"This just underscores the fact that we have so many commonalities -- we're perceived as outsiders. We can band together and really focus on this as a civil rights issue," said Carina del Rosario, communications coordinator for the Asian Counseling and Referral Service. "It seems like a basic right -- you should feel free and safe from getting harmed."

King County prosecutors said Molsberry's findings reflect long-standing local and national trends involving incidents stemming from race and sexual orientation.

"There's nothing inconsistent in this report in trends I've seen," said Michael Hogan, a King County senior deputy prosecutor who screens bias incidents for crimes that meet the prosecutable standard of malicious harassment, a felony. That standard is based on several criteria, including not only proving motive based on the protected categories, but also that the victim had reasonable fear because of it.

In King County, Hogan said, the highest number of malicious harassment cases occurred in 2000, with 16 cases. There were seven cases in 2001, 11 each in 2002 and 2003, and five each in 2004 and 2005.

He's handled cases involving cross-burning, gay people being menaced on buses and lesbians being harassed while leaving Capitol Hill coffee shops.

Molsberry's inspiration

The one-year project was inspired by an article. About a week before Christmas 2004, Molsberry, who is gay, picked up the Seattle Gay News and read a story by Robert Raketty with the headline, "Perceived to be gay ... and bashed for it."

In it, Raketty described a beating outside a Ballard restaurant and lounge, Hattie's Hat, in which a 30-year-old white man was beaten unconscious while the assailants said, "This is still Ballard." The man wound up with a concussion, split lip, loose teeth, a black eye and bruises from being kicked while on the ground. The victim believed his assailants beat him up because they thought he was gay. He wasn't, although he said wearing a nice shirt might pass for metrosexual and even homosexual in some parts of the city.

Just last Friday, a 14-year-old African American boy was attacked near a McDonald's in Ballard by three white men on the way home from his middle school. Witnesses said they heard racial slurs during the attack.

"It matters what you call people," said Pramila Jayapal, director of the Hate Free Zone, a Seattle organization that formed after the wave of attacks against people who looked like they were from the Middle East immediately after 9/11.

"There's a sense people are dehumanized in hate crimes. For aggressors to be really aggressive they have to dehumanize the person.

"We've always found people are surprised when people find out we still have issues. People say, 'Really, wasn't that just after Sept. 11?' " Jayapal said.

"The message being sent by the government (is that) you should be afraid of immigrants, that they're illegal or terrorists. All those messages are part of the sense of society that there is an 'us' and a 'them.' "

Nollette said Seattle police engage in community outreach and officer training to try to work with victims and encourage increased reporting of bias attacks.

"We certainly would encourage people to reach out to the department and let us know what we could be doing better," she said.

One thing Molsberry hopes to accomplish is to turn the tide of apathy back so that those in the mainstream or majority actively work against the bigots in their midst.

"Hate crime perpetrators believe they have the support of the community," Molsberry said.

"The community has to tell everyone, 'We condemn hate violence and prejudice.'

"People won't do that unless they know there's a problem. ... I think when the citizens of Seattle find out it's not an aberration, they'll want to do something about it."

TO LEARN MORE OR FILE A REPORT

To read the full report "Bias Crimes and Incidents in Seattle: 2000 to 2005: An analysis by type of bias and neighborhood," written by Ken Molsberry and edited by Kristina Armenakis of the Hate Crime Awareness Project and Seattle LGBT Community Center, go to: tinyurl.com/plj72

To report bias attacks to the Seattle Police Department, call 206-625-5011.

To report bias attacks in King County, call the Sheriff's Office at 206-296-3311 or the police department in the city with jurisdiction over the incident area.

To report bias or hate attacks to the Anti-Defamation League, call 206-448-5349. (Choose the option "discrimination complaints of any type.")

To learn more about the Hate Crime Awareness Project, go to: www.seattlelgbt.org/hatecrimeproject

P-I reporter Athima Chansanchai can be reached at 206-448-8041 or athimachansanchai@seattlepi.com.

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