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Ohio bill would create state bureau of hate crimes
Most recently, an Ohio man was charged with a federal hate crime for fire-bombing the Chesterland church that was set to host a drag queen story hour this spring. “There are a lot of different communities that are feeling vulnerable right now,” Weinstein said, “And I want to make sure they know we have resources that are going to be proactively reaching out to them to assist and prevent [hate crimes].
.” Although hate crime statistics in Ohio are lacking, with only 597 of 862 law enforcement agencies reporting hate crime data, experts say the picture is even less clear because many hate crimes are never reported to begin with., fear of persecution or reprisal, low conviction rates and difficulty proving bias-motivation all contribute to underreporting of hate crimes.more than 500 hate crimes were reported in Ohio in both 2020 and 2021. For comparison, in 2019 less than 400 hate crimes were reported, although numbers are likely higher. “We should be leading and providing more resources and making it clear that hate has no home in Ohio and instead there's just a complete lack of leadership from the Attorney General's Office on this,” Weinstein said. Weinstein says that, in addition to raising awareness and deterrence, he believes creating the bureau would help encourage reporting through outreach. The bill’s been introduced in the House Committee on State and Local Government and has garnered support from 14 representatives in addition to Weinstein, but it’s unclear if the bill will advance. “It should be a no-brainer, but there's a lot of common sense legislation that doesn't move, unfortunately, in the house,” said Weinstein. “We started early. We're in committee. I'm hopeful that we'll get a hearing soon and build some momentum from there.”
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