Friday, July 20, 2001 | 11:37 a.m.
Hate crimes in the state rose for the third consecutive year in 2000 and, with four incidents investigated by Metro Police last month, there are no signs that indicate the trend is reversing.
Police across the state reported 85 crimes -- such as vandalism, assault, burglary and intimidation -- that were motivated by race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or religion with 55 of those crimes reported by Metro, according to statistics recently released by the state Department of Motor Vehicles and Public Safety. North Las Vegas Police reported seven incidents.
Last month Metro Police investigated an incident that involved a swastika being burned into a lawn, a man beaten while anti-Hispanic slurs were being yelled, an extortion attempt that involved a letter with anti-Hispanic slurs and a man yelling anti-lesbian comments while accosting two women who were holding hands.
"We average a couple a month," said Detective Steve DeVore, a robbery investigator who also looks at any report that could potentially be classified as a hate crime. "Some of the crimes against gays go unreported because some of the victims aren't out and don't want to report it. I wish more people would come forward."
Although local police and national experts say some hate crimes may be under-reported, the numbers in Nevada continue to rise. In 1999 there were 74 reported hate crimes in the state; Metro reported 46 cases. Statewide in 1998 there were 56 reported hate crimes, and there were 43 in 1997.
Nationwide the number of crimes reported that were motivated by hatred based on race, gender, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation decreased for two years before rising in 1999, according to FBI statistics.
The FBI reported 8,759 hate crimes in 1996, 8,049 in 1997, 7,755 in 1998 and 7,876 in 1999, the last year the national statistics were available. The statistics in 1999 were compiled from 12,122 law enforcement agencies throughout the country.
Classifying a crime as a hate crime can be difficult for police, said Lt. John Alamshaw of the robbery unit, which compiles the statistics for Metro.
"You have to look at the investigation to determine if the crime occurred because of the bias toward a group," he said. "It may not be a hate crime just because someone called you a name during a fight. We try to determine if that hate of a group caused it."
Making arrests on hate crimes, especially vandalism, can be difficult because many times the victim doesn't know and has never had contact with the suspect, DeVore said.
The American Civil Liberties Union has expressed concern over hate crime laws being used to stop speech that people find offensive, said Gary Peck, executive director of the ACLU of Nevada.
"The ACLU is very concerned that there be a proper balancing between the First Amendment rights with a legitimate societal interest in prosecuting crimes that would not have occurred were it not for hate crime laws," Peck said. "If you are a Klan member that's not good enough to be prosecuted under hate crime laws.
"We do not defend someone targeting another person based on their race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation and commit a crime against that person."
Jack Levin, director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict at Northeastern University in Boston, said the Las Vegas area has a relatively low number of reported hate crimes, but that could be a result of the reporting process.
"Is it under-reporting or just good news?" Levin said of Las Vegas' relatively low number of incidents of hate crimes when compared to its population -- about 1.1 million. "There really is no way to answer that."
Boston, a city of about 600,000, has hundreds of reported hate crimes each year, and the police has a unit of detectives dedicated to reviewing and reporting incidents, he said. Boston also has a well-documented history of racial unrest.
"Sometimes police treat property hate offenses on a church as a childish prank and not a hate crime and just handle it informally," said Levin, who wrote the book "Hate Crimes" in 1993. He has authored a second book about hate crimes, which has yet to be released.
Levin noted, however, that hate crimes often occur when someone of a different race or ethnicity moves into an area that is historically been home to people of another race.
States started passing hate crime laws with little resistance in the early 1990s, and outcry over hate crimes was advanced by high-profile killings such as the dragging death of a black man and the pummeling, with bottles, rocks and sticks, of a gay man who died as a result of the attack.
But James Jacobs, a law professor at New York University, said hate crime laws are not necessary because sentencing requirements for most violent crimes already exist. Nevada's hate crime law calls for an increased sentence for a conviction up to an additional 25 percent of the original sentence.
"The laws themselves may be counter to what they are trying to accomplish and create more conflict for the society and may divide us more," said Jacobs, who authored the new book "Hate Crime: Criminal Law and Identity Politics."
Hate crime law sentencing enhancements may send someone to prison who might otherwise not be sentenced to confinement, where the hatred for a group may be intensified, he said.
Levin agrees that not all crimes borne out of hatred or bias should end with a prison sentence, as teenagers are often the ones committing the acts. He believes education, probation and restitution can be effective and keep young offenders out of prisons, where they might seek protections of supremacy groups and spawn more intensive hatred.
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