Local
D.C. murders down, anti-LGBT hate crimes up
Preliminary data show hate crimes based on sexual orientation rose 19% in 2012
D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier
D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray and District Police Chief Cathy Lanier announced at a news conference on Thursday that the 88 homicides reported in the city in 2012 represent the lowest number of slayings within the city in 50 years.
Lanier noted that while robberies and sexual assaults increased in 2012, violent crimes made up just 19.6 percent of the total number of crimes, with “property crime” making up 84.4 percent of the total number of reported crimes in 2012.
Lanier didn’t include statistics on hate crimes in a crime data presentation she gave at the news conference. But preliminary data on hate crimes posted on the D.C. police website this week show hate crimes targeting victims based on their sexual orientation increased 19 percent, from 37 between January and November of 2011 to 44 between January and November of 2012.
The data show the number of hate crimes against transgender residents increased from 8 to 9 in the same 11-month period from 2011 to 2012, representing a 13 percent hike.
Police officials said hate crime data for December 2012 was being tabulated and would be released at a later date.
The total number of reported hate crimes in 2011 (from January through December) was 42 for the “sexual orientation” category and 11 for the category of “gender identity/expression,” according to the data shown on the police website.
The preliminary, 11-month figures for 2012 show that the city recorded a total of 78 hate crimes for each of the categories of victims – sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, ethnicity/national origin, race, religion, disability, political affiliation, and homelessness.
Of that total of 78, hate crimes targeting a victim because of his or her sexual orientation (44) comprised 56.4 percent of the total, the highest of all the categories. Race related hate crimes (12) came in second, at 15.3 percent, with gender identity and expression (9) coming in third, making up 11.6 percent of all reported hate crimes in D.C.
Hate crimes based on a victim’s religion (6) made up 7.7 percent of the 11-month total in 2012. Just one hate crime was reported so far in 2012 for each of the categories of disability and political affiliation. None was reported for the homelessness category in the 11-month period of 2012.
In his remarks at Thursday’s news conference, Gray said he was hopeful that his Project Empowerment program that provides job training for unemployed transgender people would lower the number of anti-trans hate crimes.
Transgender activists have said some of those participating in the job training program were forced to engage in street prostitution to survive prior to entering the program.
“If we can take some of the sense of need from people who feel like the only way they can survive is by engaging in street activity, the sale of sex, if you will – I think that’s going to reduce some of the hate crimes also because it’s not going to make people as vulnerable as they might have been,” Gray said.
“We’ve got a program started now…to try to improve the understanding of people who are transgender,” he said. “So I think in addition to working at it from a law enforcement perspective, we also need to work on it from the perspective of how we improve the conditions under which people who are transgender, for example, are living.”
Although the hate crime data for December 2012 have yet to be released, preliminary reports on the activities of the department’s Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit show at least three possible anti-LGBT hate crimes took place in December.
Officials with the local group Gays and Lesbians Opposing Violence (GLOV) have said they believe the actual number of anti-LGBT hate crimes is significantly greater than the number reported because some LGBT victims choose not to report hate crimes.
Activists say some hate crime victims report the crime as an assault without informing police they were targeted for their sexual orientation or gender identity. In other cases, according to GLOV, a police officer many not recognize an assault or other crime as a hate crime and doesn’t record it as such on a police report.
Just one LGBT related murder took place in 2012 — the February 2012 stabbing death of transgender woman Deoni Jones, 23, at a bus stop in Northeast D.C. Police arrested District resident Gary Niles Montgomery, 55, for the crime less than two weeks later. Montgomery has since been indicted on first-degree murder while armed and is being held in jail while he awaits trial.
Police have listed the motive of the slaying as robbery rather than a hate crime.
Transcript follows:
Blade: Chief, can you say a little about hate crimes and where they fit into the overall crime statistics you presented today? Are they going up or down?
Chief Lanier: I don’t have any hate crime statistics with me. I’ll get them for you. We were staying pretty much even across the board for hate crimes. We did have some increases in different categories. But I have to get back to you with the specific categories. I’ll get it for you.
Mayor Gray: I think, Lou, if I could add a facet to that. I think you know that we worked hard to try to create a greater acceptance of people who are transgender, who often times are the victims of hate crimes in the District of Columbia. And if we can take some of the sense of need from people who feel like the only way they can survive is by engaging in street activity, the sale of sex, if you will — I think that’s going to reduce some of the hate crimes also because it’s not going to make people as vulnerable as they might have been.
We had a very successful year with our transgender efforts in the last 12 to 15 months. We had three cohorts to go through the Department of Employment Service’s Project Empowerment. We were able to get people jobs. We got a campaign started now, as I think you know, to try to improve the understanding of people who are transgender. So I think in addition to working at it from a law enforcement perspective, we also need to work on it from the perspective of how we improve the conditions under which people who are transgender, for example, are living.
“While we congratulate MPD and the city of Washington in reaching the lowest level of overall homicides in 50 years, the anti-LGBT violence numbers are still going up at an alarming rate and need to be addressed,” said A.J. Singletary, chair of GLOV.
“Even though the low homicide rate was the big story of the day, Chief Lanier rightly included data on other categories of crime” in her presentation at the news conference, Singletary said. “Hate crimes should have been included for comparison purposes as well. While the LGBT community is acutely aware of the violence we face on a daily basis in Washington, other citizens of D.C. as well as the mainstream media often aren’t aware of this large and seemingly ever-growing problem,” he said.
District of Columbia
Gay priest credited with boosting church support for LGBTQ Catholics
Fr. Tom Oddo’s biographer speaks at Dignity Washington event
The author of a biography of a U.S. Catholic priest said to have advocated for support by the Catholic Church of gay Catholics in the early 1970s has called Father Thomas ‘Tom’ Oddo a little known but important figure in the LGBTQ rights movement.
Tyler Bieber, author of the recently published book “Against The Current: Father Tom Oddo And the New American Catholic,” told of Oddo’s life and work on behalf of LGBTQ rights at a March 22 talk before the local LGBTQ Catholic group Dignity Washington.
Among Oddo’s important accomplishments, Bieber said, was his role as a co-founder of the national LGBTQ Catholic group Dignity U.S.A. in 1973 at the age of 29.
But as reported in the prologue of his book, Bieber presented details of the sad news that Oddo died in a fatal car crash in 1989 at the age of 45 in Portland, Ore., where he was serving as the highly acclaimed president of the University of Portland, a Catholic institution.
“He was a major figure in the gay rights movement in the 1970s, an unsung hero of that movement,” Bieber told Dignity Washington members, who assembled for his talk in a meeting room at St. Margaret Episcopal Church near Dupont Circle, where they attend their weekly Catholic mass on Sundays.
“And Dignity U.S.A. saw intense growth in membership and visibility” during its early years under Oddo’s leadership, Bieber said. “The story of Father Tom and his contemporaries is a story largely untold in the history of the gay rights movement, but one worth knowing and considering,” he said.
As stated in his book, Bieber told the Dignity Washington gathering Oddo was born and raised in a Catholic family on Long Island, N.Y., and attended a Catholic high school in Flushing Queens. It was at that time when he developed an interest in becoming a priest, according to Bieber.
After studying at the University of Notre Dame and completing his religious studies he was ordained as a priest in 1970 and began his work as a priest in the Boston area, Bieber said. It was around that time, Bieber told the Dignity Washington audience, that gay Catholics approached Oddo to seek advice on how they should interact with the Catholic Church. It was also around that time that Oddo became involved in a group supportive of then gay Catholics that later became a Dignity chapter in Boston.
In a development considered unusual for a Catholic priest, Bieber said Oddo in 1973 testified in support of gay rights bill before a committee of the Massachusetts Legislature and collaborated with then Massachusetts gay and lesbian rights advocate Elaine Noble.
In 1982, at the age of 39, Oddo was selected as president of the University of Portland following several years as a college teacher in the Boston area, Bieber’s book states. It says he was seen as a “vibrant and capable administrator who delivered real results to his campus,” adding, “His magnetism was obvious. One student described him as ‘John Kennedyesque’ to the university’s student newspaper.”
Bieber said that although Oddo was less active with Dignity U.S.A. during his tenure as UP president, he continued his support for gay Catholics and what is now referred to as LGBTQ rights.
“For those that knew him prior to his term at UP, though, he represented something greater than an accomplished university administrator and educator,” Bieber’s book states. “He was a new kind of priest, a gay man living and ministering in a world set loose from tradition by the Second Vatican Council,” the book says.
It was referring to the Vatican gathering of worldwide Catholic leaders from 1962 to 1965 concluding under Pope Paul VI that church observers say modernized church practices to allow far greater participation by the laity and opened the way for sympathetic consideration of gay Catholics.
District of Columbia
HRC to host National Rainbow Seder
Bet Mishpachah among annual event’s organizers
The 18th National Rainbow Seder will take place at the Human Rights Campaign on Sunday.
The sold out event is the country’s largest Passover Seder for the Jewish LGBTQ community.
Organizations behind the event include Bet Mishpachah, a local D.C. LGBTQ synagogue that Rabbi Jake Singer-Beilin leads, and GLOE, an Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center program that sponsors events for the queer Jewish community. The theme for this year’s Seder is “Liberation For All Who Journey: Remembering, Resisting, Rebuilding.” Rabbis Atara Cohen, Koach Frazier, and Avigayil Halpern will lead it.
The Seder will honor the late GLOE co-chair Michael Singer. Singer also served on the Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center’s board.
“This Seder is both a celebration of how far we have come and a call to continue building a more just and inclusive world.” Bet Mishpachah Executive Director Joshua Maxey told the Washington Blade.
A gay man was murdered in Petersburg, Va., on March 13.
Shyyell Diamond Sanchez-McCray, who was also known as Saamel and Mable, was a drag queen who won the Miss Mayflower EOY pageant in 2015. Reports also indicate Sanchez-McCray, 42, was a well-known community activist in Virginia and in North Carolina.
Local media reports indicate police officers found Sanchez-McCray shot to death inside a home in Petersburg.
Sanchez-McCray’s brother, Jamal Mitchell Diamond, in a public statement the Washington Blade received from Equality Virginia and GLAAD, said Sanchez-McCray was not transgender as initial reports indicated.
“Our family has always embraced the fullness of who he was. He used the names Saamel, Shyyell, and Mable interchangeably, and we honor all of them. There is no division within our family regarding how he is being represented — only a shared commitment to preserving his truth with love and respect,” said Diamond.
“He was also deeply committed to community work through Nationz Foundation, where he worked and completed multiple state-certified programs to support marginalized communities,” added Diamond. “That work meant a great deal to him.”
Authorities have not made any arrests.
The Petersburg Bureau of Police has asked anyone with information about Sanchez-McCray’s murder to call Petersburg-Dinwiddie Crime Solvers at 804-861-1212.
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