These hate crimes are likely to be way UNDER-REPORTED by MPD, as well. Some of that is due to failure to report hate crimes assaults. Like sexual assaults, anti-LGBT hate crimes are notoriously under-reported– but for a variety of reasons, both victim and police-related.

In the opinion of many, there is also little doubt that MPD is under-reporting anti-LGBT hate crimes– perhaps as a matter of quiet ‘policy’. We have seen chronic failures by initially-responding MPD officers to checkoff the ‘hate crimes box’ in police reports of case where obvious elements of anti-LGBT bias motivation existed.

Then, only when concerned friends, relatives or other third parties called MPD’s Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit (GLLU, “glue”)– note well, *AFTER* MPD’s initial report was taken– were the hate crimes cases amended by GLLU to reflect that.

Imagine how many cases and victims were NOT able to pass MPD’s additional “squeaky wheel” policing test– simply because there was no concerned, knowledgeable third party to go to bat for the victim.

Don’t report it, unless someone complains. This is just one way for police management to effectively skew police hate crimes statistics — so as not to embarrass said police management and/or the mayor of a city.

But Lanier and Gray need to answer much tougher questions on a seeming discriminatory police treatment of anti-LGBT hate crimes in D.C., too.

It’s not enough for us to ask whether any given horse is winning or losing a race at any given point. Obviously, it is their performances at the finish line that really matters.

So how many anti-LGBT hate crimes perpetrators are actually being ARRESTED by MPD?

How many VIOLENT CRIMINALS are getting away with their anti-LGBT hate crimes– free as birds– to spread the word to other haters that Lanier and Gray really won’t arrest you for violently bashing LGBT residents?

Take just the cases from the last calendar year (2011)– after a year or more for MPD to investigate…

– How many of those anti-LGBT cases have been closed by MPD with an arrest?
– How many detectives’ hours were spent investigating those cases?
– How many witnesses were interviewed?
– How many MPD fliers, seeking the public’s help, were handed out to neighborhoods where the crimes occurred?

LGBT residents of DC, as well as LGBT visitors to the nation’s capital, have a right (and NEED) to know why Mayor Gray and Chief Lanier are not keeping the streets of Washington DC safe for LGBT people.