Unprovoked beatings of homeless rising

[Sorry if this is rather long. Edited to just the highlights]

'Sport' attacks spread to smaller cities
The Associated Press, Updated: 11:28 p.m. CT April 8, 2007

ORLAND, Fla. - It was a balmy night, the sort that brings the homeless out from the shelters, when the police were summoned to America Street. On the driveway of a condo, just a few paces from the gutter, lay a man. A dying man.

He looked to be 50-ish, and a resident of Orlando's streets, judging by the moldy jacket. And he'd been bludgeoned — so badly bludgeoned that he could hardly move.

Before being rushed to the hospital, where he died of his head injuries, the man, August Felix, described his attackers. Young fellows did it, he whispered to the officers who got to him first. Kids.

Within three months, two 16-year-olds and three 15-year-olds had been charged with second-degree homicide in the March 26, 2006, attack. The motive? "I don't think there was a motive," Sgt. Barbara Jones, a police spokeswoman, said, "other than, 'Let's beat someone up."'

That high-schoolers had turned — allegedly on a whim — into executioners brought pause to city officials and advocates for the homeless, not just because the killing was unprovoked, but because it fit into a trend larger than Orlando: a nationwide surge in violence largely by teenagers and young adults against some of America's most vulnerable citizens.

A 2006 report by the National Coalition for the Homeless found 142 attacks last year against homeless people, 20 of which resulted in death — a 65 percent increase from 2005, when 86 were violently assaulted, including 13 homicides.

By comparison, 60 such attacks were reported in 1999, the year the coalition — the only entity to gather such data — began to study the problem.

And these numbers are likely low because they only reflect the most egregious attacks reported in newspapers or by agencies that serve the homeless and some victims themselves, according to Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the Washington-based coalition.
'Newest minority group'

The trend is particularly troubling, he says, because such attacks no longer occur just in major cities on the East and West Coasts, as was the case in the 1980s.

In its most recent study, "Hate, Violence, and Death on Main Street USA," the coalition documented attacks against the destitute in 62 communities last year alone, in 26 states. Since 1999, such violence has occurred in 44 states and Puerto Rico, and in 200 communities nationwide.

An overwhelming majority of the attackers — 88 percent — were 25 or younger; 95 percent were male. No less than 68 percent of those accused and convicted in attacks were between the ages of 13 and 19.
This pattern of violence, in Stoops' view, hasn't gotten the attention it deserves from the public or law enforcement.

"Homeless people are the newest minority group in America that is 'OK' to hate and hurt," he said. "It's as though, somehow, they're viewed as less deserving, less human than the rest of us."

As he puts it, "Our young people get prejudices from their parents in regard to homeless people. They don't identify with the homeless, and they don't seem to see them as important."

A number of local governments have adopted ordinances that restrict where and when the homeless can sleep, stroll, beg, eat, bathe, or do laundry. And this trend may have an unintended effect — reinforcing negative stereotypes of homelessness, which contributes to the violence, some advocates say.

"When cities pass laws that target homeless people, they send a message to their communities that the homeless are not as valuable in the public eye as those with homes," says Tulin Ozdeger, a civil rights attorney at the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty.

Of late, there have been signs that lawmakers may be ready to crack down harder on those who assault the homeless without provocation — one being a recent push to categorize such attacks as hate crimes.
Currently, gays, along with racial, ethnic and religious groups, are covered by various hate crime laws around the country; convictions under these statutes usually carry harsher sentences than other types of crime.

Brian Levin, a criminologist and hate crimes expert at Cal State San Bernardino, says attacks on homeless people "fit the category like a glove," and should be punished as severely.

Hate crimes, he says, bear similar hallmarks: stereotyped victims, offenders who act on latent prejudices, offenders who seek thrills or feel superior to their victims, and a mob mentality that sweeps away caution.

"And on all these points," says Levin, "the attacks against the homeless are really indistinguishable from other hate crimes except for one difference — there are a heck of a lot more of them."
Between 1999 and 2005, 82 people were killed in America because of their race, ethnicity, or religious or sexual orientation, according to the FBI, which has been collecting data on hate crimes since 1990.
There were 169 homeless people murdered during that same period, the National Coalition for the Homeless says — a statistic that Levin describes as "astounding." It has caught the attention of some lawmakers.

Twenty-six members of Congress have asked the Government Accountability Office to determine whether attacks on the homeless should be classified as hate crimes under federal law.

In the meantime, homeless hate-crime bills are moving through the legislatures of six states: Maryland, California, Massachusetts, Nevada, Texas and Florida.

© 2007 The Associated Press

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John