Hate Crime training aims at local, federal partnerships

Thomas Perez (Courtesy US DOJ)

AURORA | Recently-passed federal hate crime legislation can help local police tackle difficult bias-motivated crimes, the nation’s top civil rights prosecutor told federal and local law enforcement Monday. 

Thomas Perez, Assistant United States Attorney General for Civil Rights, told a training conference at the Aurora Municipal Center that the Hate Crime Prevention Act of 2009 allows local police to work with federal prosecutors to try cases that may require more resources than local agencies have. 

“It is not tool that is simply a tool on our fed arsenal. It is a tool for everyone,” Perez told the crowd of local police and federal agents gathered in City Council Chambers. 

One particularly helpful piece of the legislation is that it allows prosecutors to try a group of defendants federally in a single trial, he said. 

Aurora police Chief Dan Oates said trying certain defendants as a group instead of individually can be helpful for victims because it allows them to testify just once, instead of at several trials. 

Monday’s training was important for APD, Oates said, because it keeps local police up-to-date about the options they have at the federal level. 

“It’s just smart for law enforcement to stay up on the latest opportunities in the law,” he said. 

According to APD statistics, the department investigates six bias-motivated crimes in 2010, though Oates said none of those cases involved serious injuries.

“We’ve been very fortunate in this community to have no serious hate crimes during my tenure here,” said Oates, who has been with the department since 2005. 

Perez said that the crime, however, can be under-reported in large part because some victims are scared to come forward. That’s especially true, he said, in cases where a victim is an undocumented immigrant or a gay person who has kept their orientation a secret. 

An important piece of cracking down on bias-motivated crimes, Perez said, is education. to that end, Perez was scheduled to speak at a Denver high school later Monday. 

“We cannot possibly prosecute our way out of these kinds of challenges,” Perez said. “Today’s bullies are all too frequently tomorrow’s civil rights defendants.”