Remarks on Proposed Hate Crimes Legislation

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, May 1, 2000

April 25, 2000

Thank you very much. Thank you, Amy Klobuchar and all the other law enforcement officials, civil rights leaders who are here; Attorney General Reno, Deputy Attorney General Holder.

Elian Gonzalez

Before I begin my remarks about hate crimes, I'd like to say just a brief word about the reunion of Elian Gonzalez and his father. After 5 months, it was long overdue. Now that they have been safely reunited, I believe it's time for all of us, including the media and those of us in public life, to give this family the space it needs to heal its wounds and strengthen its bonds; to work to lessen the pressure on them as the matter goes forward in the courts.

The thing that really matters now is that little boy and his life and his family. And I think, at least for the next several days, the less we all say about it and the more time he has to breathe the air of a normal life, the better.

I would like to commend the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General Holder, the law enforcement, and the INS. They had a very, very difficult job to do, with no easy choices. And I am grateful that they were able to safely reunite the young boy with his father.

Thank you.

Hate Crimes Legislation

We have just had a very, very good meeting with people who are on the frontlines of law enforcement in our communities, people with different responsibilities, very different backgrounds, different viewpoints, who have all come to the same conclusion: We need to work together as partners and as a national community to fight crimes fueled by hate, and we need strong Federal hate crimes legislation.

I want to be clear. Most hate crimes are investigated and prosecuted at the State level. We support that. In fact, one of the reasons that I asked Janet Reno to become Attorney General over 7 years ago is that she had been a prosecutor in Miami for a dozen years. And I wanted the Federal Government to have a unified law enforcement policy with State and local authorities all across this country in an unprecedented partnership. I think we have achieved that.

But in some of the most brutal, hate-motivated crimes, Federal officials have been prevented from teaming up with local law enforcement. That has denied communities the resources and the expertise they need. We can draw a line against hate by drawing on each other's experiences.

One important way to ensure that hate crimes are punished and justice is done is to make sure we're all able to do our part. And that was the focus of our meeting today. Probably, you've heard me say many times by now that the great irony of this very modern age is that the biggest stumbling block we face is perhaps the oldest problem in human relations--our fear of those who are different from us. It's not a far leap from that kind of fear into distrust and then to dehumanization and then to violence.

We have seen that in case after case across this land: a man dragged to death in Texas because he was black; a young man stretched across a fence in Wyoming because he was gay; children shot in Los Angeles because of their faiths; a young Korean-American shot coming out of church by a man who said he belonged to a church that didn't believe in God, but did believe in white supremacy.

In 1998, the last year for which we have statistics, over 7,700 hate crimes incidents were reported in our Nation, almost one an hour. And it is suspected by the experts that many more go unreported. These are not like other crimes, because these crimes target people simply because of who they are. And because they do, they strike at the heart of who we are as a Nation.

Whenever one of these crimes is committed, it creates a tension and fear that rips at the fabric of community life. This is not a partisan statement, but a simple statement of fact. This is about people who go to work, obey the law, are good citizens, and good neighbors, who ought to be able to live their lives in dignity and without fear of abuse or attack, but cannot. That's why we have worked hard to combat such crimes.

Two and a half years ago I convened the first-ever White House Conference on Hate Grimes. Since then we have increased substantially the number of FBI agents working on them. We have successfully prosecuted a number of serious cases, formed local hate crime working groups in the U.S. attorneys' offices around our Nation, worked to help police officers identify the signs of a hate crime. My budget for the coming year includes funding for hate crime training for law enforcement.

But we must do more. You have already heard today, Federal laws punish some crimes committed against people on the basis of race or religion or national origin. But they are hamstrung by needless jurisdictional requirements for existing crimes. Right now Federal prosecutors cannot prosecute even the most heinous crimes unless the victim was voting, serving on a jury, or doing some other Federally protected activity. That defies common sense.

Today I heard about a case involving three skinheads in Lubbock, Texas, who declared a race war in their community, murdered one African-American as he was walking down the street and injured two others. Local prosecutors and the U.S. Attorney's Office decided together that the case should be tried in Federal court. The skinheads were convicted and are behind bars with no chance of parole. But if the victim had been inside a friend's house instead of on a public street, that would not have been a hate crime under today's Federal law. That doesn't make sense. It shouldn't matter where the murder was committed; it was still a hate crime. And the resources of the Federal Government were needed.