Hate crimes in D.C. are skyrocketing & Trump's appointee isn't prosecuting them

[Behind the Aegis]

In the nation’s capitol, the number of hate crimes over the past two years has doubled, reaching an all-time high, but the number of hate crime prosecutions has plummeted to nearly zero. And the key reason is U.S. Attorney Jessie K. Liu, a Trump appointee who refuses to prosecute these cases.

Related: Hate crimes have risen 226% in areas where Trump held rallies

The Washington Post reports:

In Washington, the number of attacks investigated by police as bias-motivated reached an all-time high of 204 last year. The District had the highest per capita hate-crime rate of any major city in the country, according to Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University at San Bernardino.

Yet hate-crime prosecutions in the nation’s capital have plummeted, even as the number of people arrested on those charges … has soared….

In 2017, D.C. police arrested suspects in 59 hate crimes, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C. — “which handles most criminal cases in the capital,” the Post notes — only prosecuted three as hate crimes and it later dropped one of the prosecutions. “Of the 178 suspected hate crimes in 2017,” the Post writes, “police closed 54 cases involving adults by arrest. Prosecutors charged two cases as hate crimes, and both were later dropped as part of plea deals.”

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[Hermit-The-Prog]

1. appointee cooking the stats or encouraging the attacks?

[IronLionZion]

2. Make America Hate Again

The cruelty is the point. Trump's people turn a blind eye to hate crimes in my city, the nation's capital. Modi allowed pogroms against Muslims in India. Bolsonaro allowed illegal logging and fires to clear rainforest in Brazil. And so on. Crime pays when it helps right wingers.

[empedocles]

3. A story developing - more to come