House Votes to Aid Church Fires Probe

Arming federal law enforcement agents with new weapons as they attempt to snuff out a rash of arson attacks on black churches across the South, the House voted Tuesday to make it easier to prosecute such crimes as federal offenses. The legislation, which passed on a voice vote, would eliminate the $10,000 minimum damage threshold currently required to trigger federal involvement in the prosecution of property crimes against churches, synagogues or other places of worship.

The Church Arson Prevention Act also would facilitate federal action against church-burning suspects by clarifying requirements that such activities involve crossing state lines or using interstate facilities. Additionally, the bill provides compensation to congregations that lose their sanctuaries and extends federal “hate crime” protection to churches that are attacked because of the racial or ethnic composition of their members.

Meanwhile, President Clinton urged Congress on Tuesday to allow the Treasury Department to spend $12 million to step up the investigation of black church fires. The money would be transferred to Treasury’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to pay for additional staff, equipment and other expenses related to the church fires’ investigation, according to a White House statement.

And the Justice Department said it would redirect $9.5 million from its existing 1996 budget to the church fire investigation.

Judging by the broad, bipartisan outrage against the almost daily reports of church fires, a similar version of the House legislation appears unlikely to encounter opposition in the Senate and is virtually certain to be signed into law by Clinton.

In the House, the legislation drew only positive comments. Every lawmaker who spoke denounced attacks on churches as “cowardly” and “despicable acts” that “would not be tolerated.”

“The arson of a place of worship is repulsive to us as a society,” said Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and chief sponsor of the bill. “When a fire is motivated by racial hatred it is even more reprehensible. In my view there is no crime that should be more vigilantly investigated and the perpetrators more vigorously prosecuted than crimes of this type.”

Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said that “the burning of these mostly African American churches” shows the nation is in crisis. Praising his colleagues on both sides of the aisle, Conyers said: “These burnings are not condoned by anyone. On this one point we’re all united.”

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said the Senate was working “very aggressively” to pass similar legislation. “I think there are enough laws on the books already and that we should have been more serious about this probably three or four months ago,” Lott said before the House bill passed. “But . . . we should provide whatever tools our law enforcement people need to investigate these church burnings and discourage them from happening anywhere in America.”

While the torching of black churches has garnered nationwide attention because of the emotions elicited by the memory of attacks on black churches during the civil rights movement, an almost equal number of white churches has been burned in the past 18 months.