Davis Calls for New Laws to Counter ‘Very Serious’ Threat of Hate Groups

Gov. Gray Davis, declaring that hate groups pose a “very serious threat to public safety,” said Monday that he will propose legislation this week to strengthen state laws for fighting paramilitary organizations and hate groups in California.

The omnibus bill would expand the definition of a hate crime, upgrade misdemeanor violations of anti-paramilitary activity laws to felonies, automatically lengthen by three years the prison terms of convicted felons whose crimes were motived by hatred, and extend the statute of limitations covering hate crimes from one to three years.

The proposed changes largely reflect the recommendations of a blue-ribbon advisory panel that Davis formed last summer. The nine-member hate crimes panel was co-chaired by former Secretary of State Warren Christopher and former California Gov. George Deukmejian.

The panel’s 66-page report says that 36 hate groups exist in California and “are involved in extensive recruitment directed primarily at young people.” In 1998, more than 1,800 hate crimes were tallied in the state, 70% of them involving violence, against 2,136 victims.

Speaking at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, Davis said the state was the “most diverse place on the planet,” and echoed the panel’s conclusion that such a rainbow of peoples was partly what attracted hate groups here bent on “savage attacks.”

He commissioned the panel in August, two weeks after Buford O. Furrow Jr. allegedly killed a Filipino American letter carrier in Chatsworth and wounded three young children and two others at a Jewish community center in Granada Hills. Furrow, a member of a white supremacist group, reportedly traveled from Washington state to issue a “wake-up call” to kill Jews. Federal authorities are seeking the death penalty against Furrow.

Davis’ bill does not call for additional spending to combat hate crimes. The only significant panel recommendation that he did not accept called for increased funding for school-based programs. He said he wanted to assess school programs to determine if increased funding would help them raise awareness of hate crimes.

Christopher said that crafting hate crime laws was “one of the most difficult public policy issues anywhere,” in that constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and of assembly protect the expression of even the most abhorrent ideas. Government can go only so far in this area, he said, describing the panel’s recommendations as “treatments rather than cures.”

Davis said tougher laws were needed to fight violence “inspired” by hateful speech, not the speech itself.

Deukmejian urged community and church groups and schools to step up campaigns against hatred and intolerance, and only half-jokingly praised Davis for getting the high-priced private lawyers and legal assistants on the advisory panel to work pro bono, thus saving the state about $500,000.

A major but evidently frustrating concern of the panel was the “unprecedented opportunity for hate groups to spread their message to young people” on the Internet. The report says there are more than 1,000 Internet sites representing hate groups and paramilitary outfits.

But, because regulating speech is largely out of the question, the panel called for Internet-access companies to regulate themselves and distribute information regarding computer filters that block such speech.

In the governor’s proposal, the definition of hate crime would be broadened to include not only those committed against members of identifiable racial, ethnic or religious groups but also nonminorities associated with such groups or others mistakenly perceived as belonging to such groups and targeted for violence.

Panelist Carla Arranaga, a Los Angeles deputy district attorney specializing in hate crimes, said that such a change would clear up the confusion when both members of a multiracial couple were singled out for an attack. Existing law would not necessarily classify the white person as a hate crime victim.

It is now a misdemeanor under existing law for paramilitary groups to assemble to engage in weapons practice. The proposed legislation would make such activity a felony.

More than 60 paramilitary-type organizations, which are distinguished from hate groups by their anti-government focus and organization, operate in California, according to the final report of the panel, called the Governor’s Advisory Panel on Hate Groups.