Hate crimes, also known as bias crimes, are underreported, and only a few of those reports lead to convictions. However, as the number of reported hate crimes rose 5 percent just last year, this ProPublica report suggests that police training could leave law enforcement ill-equipped to deal with the problem.
Many police officers don’t receive training on how to identify a hate crime or how their states’ hate crime laws work. Only 12 states have laws requiring police academies to cover hate crimes, and seven states don’t require any instruction on the subject, according to a ProPublica. Three states spend just 30 minutes of instruction on hate crimes, and sometimes states meld the topic with cultural sensitivity training.
From the report: “State leaders at times displayed a lack of even basic knowledge about hate crimes. In Alaska, the state Department of Public Safety told ProPublica that officers in that state don’t learn about hate crimes during their time in the academy because Alaska doesn’t have a hate crimes law. In fact, Alaska’s hate crimes statute has been on the books since 1996.”
Today in sexual misconduct news: After an employee filed a complaint alleging inappropriate sexual behavior, NBC News fired anchor Matt Lauer, who had been the highest-paid person at the network.
According to CNN, NBC News chairman Andrew Lack wrote in a staff memo that this was the first complaint NBC had received against Lauer, but the network thinks it may not represent an isolated incident.
This adds to the slew of sexual misconduct and harassment allegations lodged against high-profile men this year, including veteran journalist Charlie Rose, who CBS News fired last week.
Under federal law, sexual assault exams that collect forensic evidence after a rape, are supposed to be provided free of charge to the victim. However, the Brooklyn Hospital Center charged 85 patients for these exams during the last few years.
From 2015 to February of this year, the hospital billed patients or their insurance for all but one of the sexual assault exams it performed. One patient, who was billed seven times for a single sexual assault exam, received a bill even after the New York Office of Victim Services contacted the hospital to let them know they should bill the state instead.
A CBS News report from three years back found that in 13 states, victims were billed for sexual assault exams. Aside from the forensic exams, whether or not rape victims receive free treatment related to injuries, pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections depends on the state, with some states only covering charges related to the exam itself.
Last, a little Russian hacking news: Yesterday, Canadian Karim Baratov pleaded guilty to hacking charges stemming from 500 million compromised Yahoo accounts.
Baratov had hacked webmail accounts that Russia’s intelligence agency, the FSB, had targeted. He and three other men were indicted this year in connection with the hack, but only Baratov has been arrested, as the others live in Russia. According to Tech Crunch, two FSB officers ordered the hack, and the spy agency contracted Baratov to do his part.
Contact Mollie Bryant at 405-990-0988 or bryant@bigiftrue.org. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.