What is a hate crime?
That was the subject of a seminar Thursday led by Suffolk County law enforcement officials and organized by the Riverhead-based Butterfly Effect Project (BEP), the Riverhead Anti-Bias Task Force and the Riverhead Police Department. The seminar was prompted by several hate-fueled incidents targeting the Black woman-led nonprofit earlier this year.
An audience of around 30 people gathered at BEP’s headquarters on Main Road in Jamesport to hear the presentation, given by Det. Sgt. Apryl Hargrove, commanding officer of the Suffolk County Police Hate Crimes Unit and Vanessa Overland, commanding officer of the Suffolk County District Attorney Hate Crimes, Elder Abuse, Anti-Bias, and Human Trafficking (HEAT) unit.
“A hate crime, generally, is a crime motivated by hate,” Overland said. “And hate in this context is not anger. Hate is a bias against people or groups of people with specific characteristics defined by law.” In New York, those “protected” characteristics are race, color, national origin, ancestry, gender, gender identity and expression, religion, religious practice, age, disability and sexual orientation.
“It’s a bunch of different statutes, but the common themes are: you’re intentionally selecting a person or intentionally committing acts in whole or in substantial part” because of those protected characteristics,” she said.
These crimes qualify regardless of whether or not the victim is a member of the protected class that the hate crime was directed towards.
Those who experience a hate crime should call 911. “We will investigate and work on these cases regardless of the immigration status of the victims. That shouldn’t be a reason to have victims not come forward,” Overland added.
Hate crimes carry a greater charge — and therefore harsher penalties — than other criminal offenses. For instance, an assault classified as a class A misdemeanor would be increased to a class E felony if it was motivated by hate, Overland said.
However, the difficult part of hate crimes is that they are harder to prove. The law typically doesn’t require prosecutors to prove the motive of a crime, Overland said — just that it happened. “When it comes to hate crimes, we do have to prove the why,” she said.
“This can be difficult to do. We really have to kind of dig into the mind of the person committing the crime, right?” Overland said. “So it’s super easy if, when they’re committing the crime, they’re saying all these hateful things, and it’s very clear that that’s the intent of their actions that makes it easy.”
“But when they don’t make those comments and they don’t do that, it’s a little bit harder. It gets murkier, because we have to prove it beyond reasonable doubt,” she added.
For instance, what if a person gets into a car accident and starts yelling racial slurs at the other driver, and then assaults him: is that a hate crime? No, Hargrove said.
“It was motivated by the road rage,” Hargrove said. “That person did not get up and say, ‘Hey, I’m looking to harm whatever race…’ His motivation was not hate. His motivation is not bias. His motivation was road rage.” Hargrove said her unit would continue to investigate that situation, but it would not be charged as a hate crime.
A few specific incidents related to speech are classified as crimes and can be charged under the state’s laws against harassment. These include etching, painting, drawing or placing a swastika or noose on property without the owner’s consent, and setting a cross on fire in public view. These symbols were “just deemed so hateful and historically hateful by New York State that it’s deemed an E felony punishable to four years in jail,” Overland said.
“We need to be consistent in our charging, and we have to make sure it’s not First Amendment protected speech,” Overland said. People will say abhorrent things, but that speech itself does not make it a crime, she said.
Situations that include biased and racially charged language, but are not criminal acts, are classified as “hate incidents,” Hargrove said.
“Unfortunately, it’s not a crime to say hateful speech,” Hargrove said. “When there is a threat, that is what brings the crime element into it.”
Hargrove discussed a recent incident under her command, where a man was driving around a Black neighborhood yelling racial slurs and saying “I’m gonna get you.”
“What does, ‘I’m going to get you,’ mean? “I’m gonna get you some ice cream? I’m gonna get you a hug?….It’s not a direct threat,” Hargrove said.
Hargrove ordered the man’s arrest, with the intention of getting him mental health services. “I made the decision to make the arrest because you don’t drive two hours out of your way to find a Black community that you’ve never been to to do this in,” she said.
“Now, I’m not saying that… case is totally going to get dismissed, but it’s not going well right now,” Hargrove added.
Even if a hate incident doesn’t rise to the level of a crime, a person who commits hateful acts or uses hateful speech can still face consequences. This has happened locally, Overland added: A student at Riverhead High School lost an admission and scholarship to a university rescinded after posting a “racially charged” Snapchat post, according to News 12.
“Think about kids working years and years and years, working hard during high school, doing extracurriculars, doing everything they’re supposed to do and then losing it because they’re clicking before they’re thinking,” Overland said. “It can happen to adults, too, in the workplace. People truly can lose jobs.”
In February, a slew of insults and images depicting racist tropes were posted in the comments section of a BEP Facebook post announcing an upcoming event honoring founder Tijuana Fulford and five junior volunteer leaders — all Black women.
Soon after, the nonprofit began receiving anonymous and threatening phone calls and decided to cancel a fundraising event in March, hosted at a historically Black church in Riverhead, out of safety concerns.
Fulford, who is also BEP’s executive director, said the goal of Thursday’s seminar was not to “rehearse and rehash” those incidents. “I as an agency, and I hope you guys as well, have decided that we are more than a few phone calls and threats,” she said.
“I think it’s really important as a community that we understand what a hate crime is, versus the hate incident,” Fulford said, “and how we can be more informed, more engaged and more involved to make sure things like this do not happen in our communities and, more importantly, if it does happen, we know exactly what steps to take that we need to do to ensure that we get swift action, but also accountable action and real community action.”
Fulford said she has updated the nonprofit’s phone systems to block out anonymous callers, at the recommendation of the Riverhead Police Department. The office is no longer getting the racist and threatening calls, she said.
The person making the threatening calls would “word it in a way where it was like an alluded threat and not a very direct threat,” Fulford said. The calls were reported to the police, but were not legally a hate crime.
Fulford told the audience that she wants the community to learn what she learned while dealing with the calls. “I’m hoping that you guys, along with myself tonight, really take in what’s being said, learn about what we can do and learn the facts — you know, the FAQs — of what a hate crime is, is not and then learn how we move forward as a community together,” she said.
Riverhead Police Chief Ed Frost said it’s “important for the public to understand what constitutes a hate crime.” He said the department thoroughly investigates suspected hate incidents and takes them “very seriously.” He said Riverhead may consult and refer investigations to Suffolk County Police’s Hate Crime Unit if the incident is “deemed to be an actual hate crime.”
Attendees of the presentation said they found it very informative.
“I did not know what a hate incident was. I only knew about the hate crimes,” said Alison Gutierrez, 14, of Riverhead. “I thought it was all under one category, but it actually branches out — and that’s very fascinating to me.”
Riverhead Anti-Bias Task Force Chairperson Mark McLaughlin said he hopes attendees of the seminar will share the information with the people they know.
Kathleen Hobson-Harris, 64, a Riverhead resident and BEP volunteer ambassador said she hopes there are more seminars like Thursday’s.
“We need a little bit more of it in the community to help educate our people here in the community about hate crimes,” she said
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