In both letters, the congresswoman asked for information on hate crime prosecutions with particular regard to attacks against the LGBTQ community.
“Her office, particularly when contrasted with U.S. attorney’s offices before her, has been asleep on the job,” Norton said in an interview Tuesday.
According to a Washington Post analysis of police and court records, hate crime prosecutions in the nation’s capital have plunged to their lowest point in more than 10 years — even as the number of people arrested on charges of hate-motivated attacks has skyrocketed.
Last year in the District, police investigated 204 attacks as being bias-motivated and made arrests in 59 hate crime cases. But the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia, which handles most criminal cases in the city, only prosecuted three as hate crimes. One was ultimately dropped.
“I am concerned about the low prosecution rates by your office compared to those of other cities,” Norton wrote in the letter sent Thursday. “I would like an explanation for the very high declination rate for hate crime prosecutions by your office and whether these declination decisions stemmed from a lack of resources or from other causes.”
Norton initially contacted Liu in July, following a meeting with members of the LGBTQ community as residents told her they feel “under siege,” she said.
When she didn’t hear back, Norton said, she followed up with a phone call. Then, last week, she wrote another letter.
“Apparently, the District has had more hate crimes than any other jurisdiction in the United States,” Norton said Tuesday. “What is happening here? Who are these people who are doing this? Why is it increasing at this time?”
Liu’s office didn’t respond Tuesday to a request for comment.
Liu, who took office two years ago, promised local activists that “as a woman of color,” she would take hate crimes seriously. Last month, she released a statement defending her record: “We provide every potential case with a hate crimes enhancement with the careful attention and commitment it deserves.”
At a community meeting last month, Liu announced her office had added a second hate crimes coordinator to ensure cases were appropriately prosecuted.
“The fact that there are more reported hate-bias crimes has definitely not gone unnoticed in our office,” she said. “We’ve had a lot of conversations about it in recent weeks, thinking about how we can revamp our efforts and resources to address it.”
Norton said that’s not good enough.
“At this point the only thing to make them feel safer, I think, is to see some prosecutions,” she said.
The District’s Bias-Related Crime Act allows judges to enhance certain crimes by increasing their possible sentences up to 50 percent if the crime is found to have been committed based on a victim’s age, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or political affiliation, among other factors.
Members of the D.C. area’s LGBTQ community have felt vulnerable after a summer of violence that included transgender women being attacked and killed; a gun scare at the Capital Pride parade that sent hundreds running in a panic; a stabbing inside a gay bar in Dupont Circle that left three people wounded; and a gay couple leaving a bar on U Street being robbed and beaten by a group who hurled homophobic slurs at them.