Justice Hoorn and the municipal council want to punish people more harshly

(L-R) Edited cutouts of Kansas City LGBTQ+ Commission Chairman Justice Horn and Police Chief Stacey Graves – and their affiliated logos – face each other.

On January 11, 2024, the Kansas City City Council unanimously voted in favor of Ordinance 231032: a new ordinance that enhances penalties for hate crimes at the municipal level. This move by the City Council, heralded as a bold step against LGBTQ+ hate, only reinforces our city’s terribly under-ranked police department, and furthers the falsehood that criminalization is a “solution” to ending hate.

Regulation 231032 makes the criminal penalty more severe

Under recently passed Ordinance 231032, a hate crime penalty enhancement will be implemented at the municipal level, allowing prosecutors to prove whether a crime was motivated by bias. This means that this ordinance expressly does not allow hate crimes to be charged as a single crime and instead allows prosecutors to stack charges against suspects. The penalty increase if someone is accused of a hate crime is as follows:

• Strengthens Fine: A minimum fine of $300 for the underlying violation
• Strengthens Punishment: an increase in sentence of up to sixty (60) days
• Continuation Offence: each daily violation constitutes a separate violation

Ordinance 231032 was introduced to the City Council on December 7 and proposed by the LGBTQ+ Commission of Kansas City, founded and led by Judge Horn. The ordinance was also sponsored by Andrea Bough, Crispin Rea, Jonathan Duncan and Eric Bunch.

In a letter to the city council, the LGBTQ+ Commission expressed its blatant intention to use police and other municipal measures as a deterrent to hate crimes.

“The ordinance would give law enforcement, the state attorney general and the Municipal Division of Courts an additional tool to protect victims of hate crimes in the city of Kansas City.”

‘Hate crimes’ don’t prevent hate, they increase the power of the police

The Horn and Kansas City Council’s faith in the criminal justice system and the prison industrial complex as advocates for justice for marginalized communities is flawed and dangerous.

At a basic level, they fail to recognize how policing and criminalization disproportionately impacts the Black community, especially in Missouri. In fact, a hate crimes report (conducted by the Movement Advancement Project in 2021) found that Black people made up 11% of the population in Missouri, but nearly 33% of hate crimes reported by federal law enforcement mentioned black offenders.

Nationally, since the very first federal hate crimes statute was passed in 1968, data derived from hate crime reports has been doubly altered and weaponized as another tool for white supremacy. In a report with Prism, Mai Tran, an investigative journalist based in New York, writes:

“The kind of violence that constitutes what are now considered ‘hate crimes’ is fundamental to the US as a settler-colonial nation, but they were not codified as crimes of bigotry until the country passed a federal law. hate crimes statute of 1968. Since then, hate crime data has been flawed and manipulated. For example, the NYPD counts crimes stemming from something called “anti-white bias,” separated from “anti-gay” or “anti-Jewish” prejudice, as a hate crime.”

Inadequate data and reports also create the pretext for both police and city council members to call for increased funding, oversight, and collection of crime statistics by police departments.

A good example of this is the Matthew Sephard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a 2010 federal bill that significantly expanded police power. This new law gave authorities at the federal level the ability to assist with local hate crime investigations through increased funding, and also made more money available for increased police training and supervision of youth. Additionally, the law added military personnel as a “protected class.” Some may remember further expansions of this in 2014-2015, known as “Blue Lives Matter laws,” or even today, where Kansas City is now required to allocate 25% of its total budget to KCPD, as opposed to other public issues, such as transit. and housing.

Hamid Khan, organizer of Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, says this about data collection on hate crimes by the police state,

“As far as data collection goes, one of the biggest problems is always that the information ends up in the stalker state, which is then used to track and track and criminalize and literally stalk people in their lives.”

The city council’s dependence on the police also ignores the disproportionate violence that queer and transgender people experience at the hands of the police. According to a 2013 report from the NYC-Anti Violence Project, transgender people were seven times more likely to be physically assaulted by police than cisgender individuals. And in a 2015 survey of young LGBTQ people by the Urban Institute, “15 percent of respondents reported that simply having condoms when stopped by police was enough to warrant prolonged interrogation and even arrest for prostitution-related crimes .”

By focusing on hate crimes, the City Council is reinvesting in the criminal justice system and the prison industrial complex, granting these systems the structural power to “create meaning through punishment” – that is, reinforcing the idea that we are humanized as we are recognized by the state and ‘recorded’ by the police.

GLAAD influences the adoption of Regulation 231032

Something to note about this regulation is its influence by major players at the national level, namely GLAAD. Justice Horn, who currently chairs the Kansas City LGBTQ+ Commission, has an extensive history of working with GLAAD: a national LGBT media advocacy organization currently working to pass criminalization bills in several states.

Last October, GLAAD visited Kansas City to host an “activism workshop” around the time Ordinance No. 231032 was drafted.

Following the workshop, GLAAD published an article via their website on October 18, 2023, summarizing the visit, focusing on the LGBTQ Commission’s plans to pass a hate crimes law in Kansas City. Alvaro Ontiveros Aguilar, an attorney and member of the Kansas City LGBTQ Commission, was quoted in the article as saying:

“My first task on the committee was to lead a movement to add a hate crimes ordinance to our municipal codes. That is one of my greatest passions and greatest concerns”

In 2022, GLAAD partnered with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on a mass surveillance effort to counter “anti-LGBTQ+ extremism and hate” using surveillance, data tracking, and cooperation with law enforcement. In a paragraph from their November press release they write:

“The partnership will enhance both organizations’ capabilities to detect extremist activity and hate incidents, produce reports and resources to educate key stakeholders and the public on trends and developments, and alert law enforcement and community organizations to threats targeting LGBTQ+ individuals and institutions”

The ADL is known for their entrenched history of attacking and monitoring progressive movements, advocating “tough on crime” legislation (with this position often disproportionately affecting underrepresented communities), and taking pro-Zionist positions, especially regarding Palestine. . In August 2020, a large coalition of community organizations came together to create an open letter and resource platform called “#DropTheADL,” specifically dedicated to communities “saying no to the Anti-Defamation League in our schools, coalitions and movements.”

A week after Ordinance 231032 was passed in Kansas City, GLAAD published an article on their site titled “Kansas City Council Just Introduced a Hate Crime Ordinance That Will Help Protect LGBTQ People in Their Community,” and referenced their work with the ADL to detect hate. crimes.

A national organization with little to no ties to Kansas City should not be determining our future, let alone by (1) strategically placed pawns like Justice Horn and (2) the use of police.

Fighting back against criminalization in Kansas City

The decision to adopt the ordinance comes in the wake of Kansas City hosting the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Concerns about the treatment and safety of the LGBTQ+ community were widely raised during the 2022 World Cup, which was held in Qatar, a country where strict rules apply. laws that criminalize same-sex relationships. So on the surface, the ordinance may seem like a progressive measure to address and mitigate hate crimes, but it is also a political move used to reflect Kansas City as a safe place for queer individuals. In a statement to KCUR, Kansas City Council Member Crispin Rea said:

“As we find ourselves in the spotlight both on national television and soon internationally with the World Cup, it is important that we continue to reiterate our commitment and reaffirm that this is a safe and welcoming city.”

The regulation’s reliance on punitive measures to address anti-LGBTQ+ hate not only fails to effectively combat discrimination, but also risks exacerbating existing problems of systemic racism and marginalization. The priority given to punitive enforcement over real community engagement and support is alarming. Beyond everything else, the police are ill-equipped to deal with these complex issues, and continuing to lock people up does not protect against violence or change our material conditions.

It is imperative to reject such harmful measures and instead pursue recovery strategies that uphold the dignity and rights of all individuals.