Hate crimes examined in workshop at Northern

Hate crimes and how to ease racial and religious tensions within communities was the subject of a workshop at Northern this week.

The workshop, held in Montana State University-Northern’s Student Union Building Ballroom Tuesday, featured speakers from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Billings

The workshop was attended by faculty, students, members of the Hill County Sheriff’s Department and the public.

The speakers did not say why the presentation was being held at Northern. The press office for the U.S. Attorney’s office did not return several calls.

Christina Estrada-Underwood, director of Diversity Awareness and Multicultural Programs at Northern, said the Montana U.S. Attorney’s office in Billings reached out to her to reserve the space for the meeting as part of an outreach effort.

The workshop consisted of a presentation on legal issues, legislation related to biased crimes, along with how to go about easing tensions within a community.

Brendan McCarthy, a civil rights coordinator and acting assistant U.S. attorney, gave a presentation on legal issues, legislation and statutes related to hate crimes or bias crimes.

A handout at the forum said a hate crime is a criminal offense motivated by personal prejudice and directed at others because of their perceived race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religion or disability. The number of hate crime victimizations in the U.S. increased by 7 percent in 2015.

Despite the recent increase, the number of hate crime victimizations experienced annually between 1995 and 2015 has decreased 36 percent.

McCarthy said for the purpose of the presentation the terms hate crime and bias crime would be used interchangeably.

“I think any type of crime could be motivated by hate but ... once we get to some of the different categories, it has to be based on a bias of a specific gender, national origin or race or something like that,” McCarthy said.

Federal statutes, he said, exist against institutional vandalism that includes vandalism or defacement of houses of worship or cemeteries or that prohibit a religious service. Other statutes make it illegal to intimidate, harass, assault or trespass on the property of an individual because of that person’s race, religion or national origin.

If a federal investigation determines state laws were not broken, the case is sometimes sent to a state’s justice department to determine if any state laws had been broken, McCarthy said.

To be considered a bias crime, an act has to have been committed with willful intent. This is determined whether bias was the sole or one of the motivating factors in committing the crime and whether or not the victim was targeted for their race, national origin or religious belief.

Statutes also exist, McCarthy said, to address cases where race, national origin or religion was one of the motives.

Later in the workshop, members from the U.S. Justice Department’s Community Relations Services led an interactive discussion.

Rosa Salamanca, a senior conciliation specialist of the Community Relations Service with the Montana U.S. Attorney’s Office, asked students about definitions of discrimination, bias and harassment.

At the request of Northern’s administration, Salamanca conducted an informal assessment last spring of the climate on campus related to the treatment of American Indian students after a student felt threatened in a classroom when they heard a statement made about Native Americans.

The administration determined the student who made the comment was not a threat but banned that student from most of the campus to minimize interaction between the student who made the comments and the student who felt threatened.

Salamanca declined to comment after the workshop whether the workshop was in response to that incident.

The group discussed during the workshop putting together an open forum to talk about what they can do in terms of easing tensions and what would help move the campus forward past conflicts between different groups of students based on race.

Salamanca, students and faculty taking part in the workshop agreed that it would be good to have an open forum where students, faculty, the administration and other relevant stakeholders could talk about how the campus should respond to future incidents of hate and improve the social environment on campus when it comes to issues of race.

The audience and Salamanca began crafting a statement that she said would be sent to Northern Chancellor Greg Kegel requesting such a forum.

Salamanca said she would send the statement to Kegel and the people who were at the workshop.

The Havre Daily News requested a copy of the statement but had not received it by printing deadline today.