ARTICLES

Everybody's D.A.?

Some Hate Crimes More Important Than Others

By Allyson Smith

The San Diego district attorney's office held a "hate crimes training" session on Friday, February 28 in the downtown Hall of Justice. The public seminar occurred less than two months after Bonnie Dumanis was sworn in as the United States' first openly homosexual D.A.

During the forum Hector Jimenez, a deputy district attorney in the hate crimes division, compared East County residents to Nazis and told participants to contact certain attorneys for hate-crimes lawsuits. A subsequent Roger Hedgecock radio show criticized Dumanis and got a letter of apology from the D.A.'s office for Jimenez's picture of East County.

But what was interesting and not reported is how the seminar was advertised.

A February 10 internet announcement from A.J. Davis-DeFeo of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Center in Hillcrest, advertised the session as "Hate Crimes Training for Employees of Community Based Organizations." A phone number supplied with the announcement connected directly to Davis-DeFeo's office at the center.

Approximately 40 people, many of them gay center staffers, including executive director Delores Jacobs, attended the forum. Jimenez welcomed participants by saying, "I'm very proud to offer these services. I don't think we've ever done this before to your community and the people who service the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transsexual community, so I'm very happy to do that."

Jimenez introduced Lieutenant Mark Dallezotte, police liaison to the homosexual community, who explained what a hate crime is: "If somebody just came up to somebody and hit them in the face, what do we have there? We just have a simple battery. But if they combine the hitting with name-calling, which might be a racial name or a sexual orientation [slur] or something like that where the crime is motivated by hate, then we have a hate crime. So that's what the police have to do: The officers take the initial report; they'll enter [it into] their laptop; it gets shot over to the detectives the following morning; the detectives will do the follow-up. Each area station in the city has a detective assigned there that is a hate crimes detective, and they do nothing but the hate crimes for that division, so that detective will be doing the follow-up, and he'll keep me informed, and I report directly to the chief of police, and I'll keep him informed of what's going on."

Deputy city attorney Lea Fields talked about the differences between the city attorney's office and the DA's office in prosecuting hate crimes: "My workload, I guess fortunately, is not that big for hate crimes, because whenever I get a hate crime that can remotely be charged as a felony, I send it over to Hector and [hate crimes division deputy DA] Wendy Patrick, because our goal is to use the bigger hammer. Whoever has the biggest hammer is going to [get] the case."

Mary Scott Knoll of the Fair Housing Council of San Diego said the lack of housing hate crimes complaints led to her agency to conduct a study "to measure the level of compliance with fair housing in the San Diego region.... We could not find very many cases that had been brought on the basis of hate crimes.

"We were interested in legal, civil remedies being put into place, because ultimately we've done this work in a very nurturing and user-friendly way for 12 years, but we've become tired of our very user-friendly, 'Don't you want to be nice, let's play nice, let's do the right thing, let's follow the law [approach].' We are fed up with that process and we want to file some cases, because we have learned in our field of work that the fastest remedy ... the fastest way to compliance is someone's bank account. And when you are able to impact their income, their bank account, their holdings, their property, then you get their attention."

While Knoll was speaking, Jimenez interjected, "I say you call M.E. Stephens and sue their ass civilly. Call a civil lawyer and sue them for California state law."

Stephens, a female homosexual, is an ACLU cooperating attorney helping to oust the Boy Scouts from Balboa Park because of the Scouts' barring avowed homosexuals and atheists.

Knoll continued, "What we do is help people package their complaint well enough for a lawyer or a Department of Fair Employment and Housing to look at it seriously." She added, "A person who has AIDS or who has the HIV medical condition can allege that they are disabled for purposes of the Fair Housing Act, and in so doing, the Federal Fair Housing Act -- its amendment -- affords persons with disabilities certain rights."

After Knoll, Jimenez began his talk with a slide show presentation that showed an airliner crashing into the World Trade Center on September 11, lynchings of African Americans, and Ku Klux Klan rallies.

Jimenez described four types of hate crimes offenders: thrill seekers, reactive offenders, identity-conflicted offenders, and mission offenders. Reactive offenders, he said, "are people who fear that somebody's taking over something that belongs to them. They're people that are mad about all those damn minorities that are getting into my school or all those damn women that are getting promoted, the particular 'blank' person who moved into our neighborhood. So, they perceive a threat and they are going to react against it. So any time people are out exercising their rights -- like at a gay pride parade -- it makes these people very angry."

Jimenez explained, "A lot of gay people act out. They're ugly, ugly homophobic because they don't want their people, their friends to know they're gay or anyone to think they're gay at school, so they react by coming out in the meanest, ugliest [way] possible, attacking other people who are perceived to be gay so nobody thinks they are gay."

At one point while Jimenez spoke at the front of the room, lawyer James McElroy walked into the back of the room. Seeing McElroy, Jimenez exclaimed, "Oh my God! Jimmy McElroy! My God! Come in, buddy, I hope you're staying." Gesturing to empty seats in the first row, Jimenez said, "Over here, buddy, you're stuck. Front row."

Jimenez told the audience, "Everybody, if you don't already know, that guy is a superstar lawyer. His name is James L. McElroy. He has done fabulous work by himself and with the Southern Poverty Law Center. Ah, don't say bullshit." The audience applauded, and Jimenez added, "I'm glad he's here, because at the end, he's going to help us with the question-and-answer segment. If you want to sue their you-know-what, that's one of the guys to go to."

(What Jimenez didn't say was that McElroy is representing atheist Philip Paulson in his lawsuit to remove the cross from Mt. Soledad, and as lead counsel for Planned Parenthood of San Diego and Riverside Counties, McElroy has brought lawsuits like one in March 1999 that aimed to block free-speech rights of pro-lifers.)

Six days after the hate-crimes meeting, during his March 6 show, local radio talk show host Roger Hedgecock summed up the session this way: "Back on February 28, on a Friday, at the district attorney's office in downtown San Diego, the main office of the district attorney, Bonnie Dumanis' office, they held a hate crimes forum. The forum was -- and that's the title of it, hate crimes forum -- was advertised apparently only to the San Diego gay and lesbian community. A hate crimes forum. There has been a hate crimes division in the district attorney's office, I think put in there by Paul Pfingst, but this was the first-ever forum apparently held specifically for the gay, lesbian, bisexual transgender, and all those folks community -- and, of course, fewer than what, a couple of months after Bonnie Dumanis is sworn into office, and as she publicly proclaims in the national media, as the first-ever gay district attorney. And I was accused of being at least insensitive for bringing this up during the campaign. So it wasn't an issue during the campaign, but now it's an issue after the campaign, apparently."

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