As Pride events take place in Missoula this weekend, members of state and local criminal justice and administrative personnel gathered on Friday to discuss how hate crimes in Montana are investigated and handled by law enforcement.
Anti-LGBTQ+ laws swept the nation during the last round of state legislative sessions, but hate against LGBTQ+ individuals in Montana is documented locally, too.
“We haven’t just had national and international incidents grounded in hate,” Montana U.S. Attorney Jesse Laslovich said at the panel, hosted at the University of Montana’s Alexander Blewett III Law School. “We’ve experienced them right here, in Montana, as there’s been an increase in hateful rhetoric against historically marginalized groups, such as our LGBTQ+ community members.
“With the recently concluded Montana legislative session, new laws have targeted transgender youth and the drag communities.”
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Missoula Rep. Zooey Zephyr, one of Montana’s first transgender lawmakers, was censured in the recent legislative session, and homophobic neo-Nazis showed up to Missoula’s Trans Day of Visibility in March.
Montana Pride President Kevin Hamm asked the panel what they’re doing to address hateful rhetoric from neo-Nazis that show up to Pride events in Montana.
“How are you taking that seriously?” Hamm asked.
Missoula Police Detective Ethan Smith serves at the department’s LGBTQ+ Community Liaison.
Smith said he monitors social media posts and decides what to focus resources on.
“My biggest concern, of course, is if there’s going to be something dynamic, it’s going to happen at an event like this,” Smith said of Missoula’s Pride events. “So we do investigate that stuff.”
He said the department has safety measures and a security plan in place in the event a large protest gets violent.
Specific to Montana, there were 17 reported hate crimes in 2021, Assistant U.S. Attorney and Civil Rights Coordinator Paul Vestal said.
This week, a Montana man was sentenced to 18 years in federal prison for threatening a woman with violent, homophobic slurs and shooting at her house with an AK-47 assault rifle as part of a self-described “mission” to “clean” the small town of its LGBTQ community.
In May, Zephyr faced “swatting” threats. “Swatting” refers to a dangerous prank-call tactic where a caller falsely reports that a crime is happening at an area, usually someone’s house, with the intention to trigger a law enforcement response to the person’s location.
“An individual reported an anonymous tip targeting my home in Missoula, and the police recognized that it was likely a hoax and called me,” Zephyr wrote on Twitter. “I will say again. We will not be deterred. The fight for trans rights goes on.”
When asked if those threats were investigated, Smith said it was determined not to be a direct threat.
Vestal noted underreporting of hate crimes is an issue across the country, citing data that 38% of victims didn’t report because cases were handled a different way, and roughly 23% of people declined to report citing concerns that police could not or would not do anything to help.
An audience member asked what officers are doing to ensure hate crimes in Montana are being taken seriously.
“The best thing that we can do is make ourselves available and participate in events like this and open up communication with members of our community because I absolutely agree with you,” Smith responded. “There’s a lot of under-reported stuff and I think that that’s our fault, not the community’s fault.”
Montana itself doesn’t have a specific state-level hate crime law, but cases can be investigated for possible federal hate crime penalties.
“If a federal agency determines that a crime has been committed, a federal crime has been committed, they would refer it to us at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for prosecution,” Vestal said.
Locally, there is something called a “sentencing enhancement” for hate crimes, which means if someone is charged with another crime such as assault with a weapon, there’s a possibility the enhancement might be applied if the crime was based on hate. Local agencies like the Missoula Police Department investigate crimes that happen in communities, which are then referred to county attorney offices for possible prosecution. Laslovich said his office is steadfast in protecting Montanans’ civil rights.
Vestal and other panel members encouraged people to report any suspected hate crimes to their local authorities or the FBI.
Zoë Buchli is the criminal justice reporter for the Missoulian.