The Washington Post - 26.08.2019

A12 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, AUGUST 26 , 2019

killed during a 2016 armed rob-

bery.

After the attack on U Street,

Creason woke up in a hospital bed

with no memory of the incident.

Then someone sent him the vid-

eo.

“It’s not a fun experience to see

yourself dropped like a rag doll in

the middle of the street,” Creason

told The Post. He sent the video to

the police, who released images of

the suspects, along with a plea for

relevant information.

None came. The attack is one of

128 suspected hate crimes that

remain unsolved.

‘I hate Muslims’

On a Saturday morning in Oc-

tober, a man with an assault rifle

walked into a Pittsburgh syna-

gogue and opened fire, shouting

“All Jews must die.” By the time he

was arrested, 11 people were dead.

Two days later, before the vic-

tims of America’s deadliest anti-

Semitic attack had been buried,

the phone rang at the Washington

Hebrew Congregation.

“I’m so glad that 11 people died

at the other temple,” the caller

told a receptionist. “I wanted you

to know.”

Anti-Semitic hate crimes are

on the rise across the country. In

Washington, the call on Oct. 29,

2018, was one of 17 suspected

anti-Semitic hate crimes last year,

according to The Post’s analysis of

police reports.

Most of those involved swasti-

kas scrawled in visible locations:

a store window in Georgetown, a

mailbox downtown, the girls’

bathroom at an elite private high

school. One man walked out of his

house on a wintry morning in

Chevy Chase to find the Nazi

symbol freshly drawn in the frost.

Police also investigated reports

of seven anti-Muslim incidents —

up from two in 2017 — and one

anti-Hindu incident, The Post

found.

In October, a man came to the

headquarters of the Council on

American-Islamic Relations

(CAIR) and started yelling, “I hate

Muslims,” according to a police

report. When asked to leave, he

made a throat-cutting gesture at a

receptionist.

A deaf student at Gallaudet

University reported being stalked

for months online by a man who

mocked her for being Muslim and

told her “Trump is going to kill

you.”

“I blocked him again and again,

but he kept coming back every

time, making new Instagram ac-

counts,” the student told The Post

via a sign-language interpreter.

“He was constantly messaging

me, every day, 10 to 15 times.”

The Post generally does not

identify the victims of crimes

without their permission. The

student, who did not want to be

named, said she had grown up in

New York City, where she had

been threatened with a gun after

the 9/11 terrorist attacks. But

nothing had shaken her like her

Instagram stalker.

“Anytime I go outside, I feel like

I’m constantly looking behind my

back,” she said. “Being Muslim

and deaf, I feel like I can’t trust

anyone.”

Sarah Amer, a Palestinian

American, was driving to work in

downtown Washington in June

SEE ON A

homeless.

In September, Kristen Laird

was settling in for another night

near Dupont Circle when she was

approached by a man who asked

whether she was a man or a

woman. When Laird said she was

transsexual, Mickey Crawford —

who was also homeless and has a

long criminal record, including a

sexual assault conviction — de-

manded sex. When she refused,

Crawford said he would come

back later and rape her.

“I get harassed on a fairly con-

sistent basis,” Laird told The Post.

“But this last one scared me.”

A week earlier, she and her

partner had been hit by a

teenager wielding a bicycle hel-

met. Neither incident was pros-

ecuted as a hate crime. Crawford,

who pleaded guilty and said he

had a drinking problem, was sen-

tenced to 180 days’ time served.

Another transgender woman

at a homeless shelter downtown

found a piece of paper in her

locker that read: “BITCH THIS

WOMEN’S SHELTER LEAVE BE-

FORE WE KILL YOU, FAGGOT.”

Transgender people were pis-

tol-whipped and spit upon, at-

tacked while taking out the trash

and visiting the library. In Decem-

ber, the National Center for

Transgender Equality received

three threats in less than 24

hours, including one promising

to “rid the earth of scum and

garbage like you.”

Each incident reverberated

through a tightknit community

still reeling from the death of

Deeniquia “Dee Dee” Dodds, a

transgender woman who was

4 million.

One reason may be the sheer

size of the District’s LGBTQ com-

munity — about 10 percent of the

city’s residents. Police also attri-

bute the record number of attacks

to better reporting and closer re-

lations between law enforcement

and gay and transgender resi-

dents.

Activists agree but also say the

climate is worse now than it was a

few years ago.

“We see the evidence in hate-

crime statistics,” said Strang, the

gay and lesbian alliance presi-

dent, “and we see the evidence in

viral YouTube videos.”

In 2018, a gay man was threat-

ened in the locker room of his

gym. A woman came home to find

her gay pride flag smeared with

feces. A lesbian was called a

“dyke” and body slammed by her

own brother who said “if she

wanted to act like a man, he

would treat her like a man,” ac-

cording to a police report.

Rudolph Williams was dancing

at a nightclub on Feb. 3, 2018,

when another clubgoer asked

him to move. Williams, who is

openly gay, responded that he was

“just listening to the music.” Sud-

denly, he said, he was struck in the

head with a champagne bottle.

“I felt the warmth of the blood

run down my face,” he recalled,

and the man who wanted him to

move laughed. “He said, ‘You fag-

gy motherf---er.’ That’s when I

knew it was deliberate,” Williams

said.

Transgender men and women

also were frequent targets of

abuse, especially those who were

‘Garbage like you’

On a warm spring evening,

Michael Creason and Zach Link

were drinking at the Dirty Goose

— a gay bar on U Street just two

miles from the White House —

when Link decided it was time to

order his friend a ride home.

It was about 12:30 a.m. on

Sunday, April 15, 2018. As the two

walked hand-in-hand on the busy

sidewalk toward an Uber, a group

of men bumped into Creason.

When Link followed them and

demanded to know why they had

jostled his friend, the group at-

tacked.

“You f---ing fags,” one of the

men said, before punching Link

in the face.

As a bystander filmed on her

cellphone, two men punched and

kicked Link as he lay on the

ground. When Creason tried to

help him, a third man blindsided

him with a blow to the back of the

head.

“What’s going on?” said the

woman filming, as Link spat out

his teeth and Creason lay uncon-

scious in the street.

The video of the attack went

viral. For the LGBTQ community,

it was a reminder that this city of

700,000 people, often viewed as

one of America’s most gay-friend-

ly, is also home to more reports of

homophobic hate crimes than al-

most anywhere in the country.

The 61 anti-gay and 33 anti-

transgender incidents investigat-

ed by D.C. police last year easily

eclipse those in the 18 other big

cities Levin has studied, includ-

ing New York, with 8.5 million

people, and Los Angeles, with

The Nov. 28 incident was one of
a record 204 suspected hate
crimes in the capital last year. The
true number is probably higher
because, experts say, many hate
crimes are not reported to police.
Even so, the District has the high-
est rate per capita of any major
city in the United States, accord-
ing to Brian Levin, director of the
Center for the Study of Hate and
Extremism at California State
University at San Bernardino.
As reports of hate crimes have
surged across the country, much
of the attention has been focused
on white-supremacy-inspired
mass shootings in Pittsburgh and
El Paso and an attack by an
avowed neo-Nazi in Charlottes-
ville.
In Washington, the arrest of a
self-professed white nationalist
allegedly plotting with his broth-
er to spark a race war made
national headlines. Meanwhile,
the reported attack on the sev-
enth-grader — just two weeks
later and a few miles away —
received no media coverage. That
was true of the vast majority of
suspected hate crimes in the Dis-
trict in 2018.
The Post examined all 204 inci-
dents investigated by police as
hate crimes, interviewing two
dozen victims and a handful of
suspects. What emerged was a
portrait of pervasive bigotry and
violence: gay men and women
assaulted on the street, transgen-
der people threatened by strang-
ers, African Americans taunted
with slurs, Muslims harassed for
wearing headscarves, synagogues
subjected to anti-Semitic calls.
Roughly half were violent
crimes ranging from robbery to
sexual abuse to assault, which
was the most common offense.
Yet most suspected hate crimes
go unpunished in the District.
Despite a strong push by police to
identify and investigate bias-mo-
tivated incidents, there were no
arrests in roughly two-thirds of
the cases, The Post found. Of the
adult suspects identified, just 55
faced charges of any kind. None
has been convicted of a hate
crime.
D.C. police say the seemingly
random nature of some hate
crimes can make arrests difficult,
and racist or anti-Semitic graffiti
can be tough to trace to a culprit.
“We have a robust and compre-
hensive process,” said Lt. Brett
Parson, commander of the Spe-
cial Liaison Branch, which inves-
tigates suspected hate crimes.
Jessie K. Liu, the U.S. Attorney
for the District of Columbia, said
in a statement Tuesday that her
office takes hate crimes “very seri-
ously” and recently added a sec-
ond coordinator to prosecute
them. “We continue to work close-
ly with the Metropolitan Police
Department to investigate these
cases, and with victims to pursue
justice in them,” she said.
The city’s year of hatred began
in January with a ride-share that
descended into racist violence. It
ended 12 months later in an alley,
where a bisexual man was as-
saulted with a frying pan. In be-
tween, simmering biases boiled
over on a near-daily basis. Road
rage accelerated into racism.
Roommates threatened to kill
one another over politics. An ele-
vator ride ended with one neigh-
bor’s hands around another’s
neck.
“It’s always the same with you
Spanish, Latin American people,”
one female Lyft passenger alleg-
edly told another on Jan. 17, 2018,
before punching her in the face.
“You come to this country and
steal from us.”
Nearly half of the victims be-
longed to the District’s large
LGBTQ community. There was
also a surge of partisan hatred in
the most political of cities as sup-
porters of President Trump were
attacked and his critics received
death threats.
Many people who track hate
crimes see a connection between
Trump’s ugly political rhetoric
aimed at immigrants and people
of color and what has been un-
leashed in communities across
the country.
“Look at the environment that
our nation’s leaders have created,”
said Bobbi Strang, president of
the District’s Gay and Lesbian
Activists Alliance. “Everywhere
people are feeling empowered to
say and act according to their
worst impulses.”
Or as Levin put it: “We are
seeing a democratization of hate.”

HATRED FROM A

D.C. sees

a record

year of

hatred

PHOTOS BY ASTRID RIECKEN FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Zach Link, left, and Michael Creason were assaulted last year by three men at the intersection of Vermont Avenue and U Street in a homophobic attack.

Rudolph Williams, left, who is gay, was struck in the head with a champagne bottle at a club in a suspected homophobic attack. His

case is unsolved. Kristen Laird, a trans woman, was threatened and assaulted, but neither incident was prosecuted as a hate crime.

About this series

As hate crimes soar across

the country, The Post

examines those who

commit acts of hatred,

those who are targets of

attacks, and those who

investigate and prosecute

them.

“I felt the warmth of the blood

run down my face.”

Rudolph Williams

“I get harassed on a fairly consistent

basis. But this last one scared me.”

Kristen Laird

“It’s not a fun

experience to see

yourself dropped

like a rag doll in

the middle of the

street.”

Michael Creason