Proposed Pa. hate crimes package would up penalties, extend protections
After months of painstaking work and reaching out to stakeholders across Pennsylvania, State Rep. Dan Frankel, D-Squirrel Hill, Wednesday introduced a package of four hate crimes bills.
The bills, said Frankel, are designed to increase penalties, provide better reporting and police training and protect the rights of hate crimes victims. So far, he has not provided details on how much penalties would increase, how much the measures would cost or where the state would get the money.
Taking the stage in Harrisburg with representatives of the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference, the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, the Anti-Defamation League, the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh and the Sikh Society of Harrisburg, Frankel hailed the bills as an unprecedented bipartisan collaboration to update Pennsylvania’s hate crimes statute and honor the memory of 11 worshippers who were gunned down in the Tree of Life synagogue in his community one year ago.
The killings hit close to home for Frankel. He grew up in the neighborhood. He went to Tree of Life for bar mitzvah and was driving by the synagogue the morning a gunman unleashed a hail of bullets on unwary worshippers while screaming anti-Semitic epithets.
Frankel, who had been touched by the outreach of his fellow lawmakers, began reaching out to stakeholders across the state and across party lines months ago about the need to update the state’s hate crime laws.
He said he hoped to see the bills pass the legislature and signed into law in time for Oct. 27, the one year mark of the attack on the synagogue. But balancing the measures to ensure they could pass was a time consuming effort that continued through the hours just before their introduction.
State Rep. Ed Gainey, D-Pittsburgh, and state Sens. Jay Costa, D-Forest Hills, and Larry Farnese, D-Philadelphia, joined Frankel Wednesday to announce the proposed measures and begin seeking co-sponsors.
“An attack on an individual or group because of who they are or who they love victimizes both the immediate target of the crime and their larger community. It’s an attack on these groups’ sense of security and their connection to the world around them,” Frankel said. “The penalties that these perpetrators suffer should reflect both crimes — those against individual victims and the broader targeted community.”
Costa, whose district also encompasses Squirrel Hill, was involved in the effort almost from the start. He said the bills represent an attempt to tamp down the kind of hatred that was evident at the Tree of Life that October morning.
“We can’t legislate hate. There are no laws we can write that will change what is in someone’s heart, but that doesn’t mean we can do nothing in the face of hate crimes,” Costa said. “The attack on the synagogue in Squirrel Hill, and other hate crimes around this state, have shown that there are gaps in our laws.
We can do better.”
Read the bills:
Deb Erdley is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Deb at derdley@triblive.com.
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