GREENFIELD — Local hate crime legislation proposed by the Town Council treasurer will take at least another month to reach the full council while the Appointments and Ordinance Committee makes further revisions.
The committee discussed Council Treasurer Karen “Rudy” Renaud’s proposed Hate Crime Ordinance last week, gathering additional input from members of the public who attended the meeting. The most recent draft, which Renaud will further revise and bring back to the committee, keeps the civil rights officer position outlined under the original draft, but eliminates the 48-hour time frame that the officer has to confer with the Human Rights Commission after an alleged hate crime occurs and hold a public meeting to inform the community about what happened.
“The feedback we all received was that the timelines were too tight,” Renaud said.
The current draft says that the meeting should happen “as soon as possible” after the incident. The civil rights officer would be a member of the Police Department and under the current draft, would preferably be identified as one to whom a hate crime could be committed.
Renaud also cut out the mandatory restorative justice component of the ordinance, which previously stated that any person found guilty of having committed a hate crime through the court system must perform 100 hours of community service within a year from the time they were found guilty. The most recent draft states that any person found guilty of having committed a hate crime may voluntarily meet with the Human Rights Commission and the victim to make public amends. However, some members of the public said a mandatory restorative justice component should be included in the final version of the ordinance.
The new draft also bars anyone convicted of a hate crime from entering into any type of contractual relationship with the town for five years, although Renaud said that idea needs to be fleshed out further. She also plans to include a preamble in the final version of the ordinance explaining its purpose.
There was some discussion during the Appointments and Ordinance Committee meeting about how a hate crime should be defined in the ordinance. Councilors and members of the public were in agreement that a hate crime can’t happen to anyone, but rather to members of protected classes.
Resident Emma Morgan said during the meeting that state and federal rights under Title IX, the Americans with Disabilities Act and Fair Housing laws exist because lawmakers have come to recognize that not all members of society have equal protection under the law.
“The laws are not designed to protect those who already have these privileges in our society from those who don’t,” she said. “Let’s not make the grave mistake of confusing hate-based incidents with garden-variety, personal biases and prejudices, however unseemly. Hate-based incidents, which target people of color; LGBT people; people from non-Christian backgrounds and people with disabilities are part and parcel to the kinds of bias and oppression that are not personal, but institutional and structural, and which require concentrated and persistent effort to dismantle.”
Council Vice President Isaac Mass suggested the ordinance cross-reference Massachusetts General Law instead of including its own definition of what constitutes a hate crime to keep things simple.
“You’re setting up an ordinance that is reliant on adjudication by the state, so because of that we are dependent on what the state law is,” he said.
However, Mass, who is an attorney, said hate crimes are rarely prosecuted. Even if a defendant is initially charged with a hate crime, the charge is often reduced as part of a plea bargain. Greenfield resident and former town councilor David Singer suggested the ordinance could serve as a way of making the community feel protected and supported after hateful incidents, because those incidents don’t just harm the victim, but rather the town as a whole.
At-Large Town Councilor Penny Ricketts, who, along with Renaud, has been the target of a number of recent cyber attacks, agreed, saying for her, the process is important.
“It sets the tone,” she said. “I just feel like trying to tie these groups together and having everybody work together somehow is the most important piece of this thing.”