The state of Oregon adopted a new hate and bias crime law in January 2020 to improve data reporting and access for reporting instances of hate and bias incidents. Accompanying the new law is a hotline where victims of bias crimes and incidents can report, supplementing the option to report online, on the Oregon Department of Justice website.

A bias crime in the first degree, defined in the new statute, occurs when an individual knowingly causes physical injury to another person, causes physical injury using a deadly weapon with criminal negligence towards another person or makes someone fear serious physical injury based on “the person’s perception of the other person’s race, color, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability or national origin.”

A bias incident differs from a bias crime, with a bias incident being a situation where “criminal investigation or prosecution is impossible or inappropriate,” according to the statute. 
Committing a bias crime in the second degree, defined in the statute, occurs when an individual damages another individual’s property “with the intent to cause substantial inconvenience” based on the other person’s identity. Subjecting an individual to “offensive physical contact” and threatening harm or property damage because of an individual’s identity is also covered by the second degree charge, according to the statute.
The inclusion of gender identity as a protected group was a new addition, as well. “It’s just an expansion to take into account the changes in reality,” Lane County District Attorney Patricia Perlow said. Perlow’s office handles felonies at the circuit court level, so her office will be handling cases resulting from the new bias crime law.

“It’s a significant change because of the way the law was written before,” Perlow said. “It was really difficult to assess what the motivation for the crime was, so it was easier to charge the underlying crime.”

“There was no enhancement for charging it as intimidation,” she says. “If you had an assault, you might as well charge it as an assault because that was easier to prove, and so our data collection wasn’t really that good for whether a report was a bias crime.”

The statute requires that law enforcement report statistics collected in relation to bias crimes to the Department of State Police. The State Police must report to the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission “all primary data collected” relating to bias crime, according to the law.

“The other thing is, the law created a pilot program for reporting,” Perlow said, “and I have volunteered Lane County to be part of that.” The statute named Multnomah County to participate in the pilot program, with Benton and Lane County both volunteering as well, Perlow said. 

The law dictates that the Oregon Department of Justice “establish a staffed hate crimes telephone hotline dedicated to assisting the victims of bias crimes and bias incidents.” Perlow said that anyone in the state can call the hotline and would be especially helpful for tracking incidents.

“There are areas of the state where it’s not as easy to report things like that,” she said. “A lot of people don’t use their phone as a phone anymore, and certainly, online reporting for things makes things easier. Some people do like to use their phone as a phone and do like to have some kind of connection that way, so making a hotline guarantees that someone who doesn’t want to do the online reporting has a way to make that report.”

Lane County is a good fit for the pilot program because of Eugene’s collection of bias crime and bias incident case data, Perlow said. “That’s why our numbers seem so high, as compared to the rest of the state, and the rest of the nation, for a jurisdiction this size, is that, the city of Eugene has been collecting every reported incident.”

The FBI’s 2018 record of hate crime incidents showed 39 total cases of hate crime in Eugene, compared to Salem’s five and Portland’s 15.

Perlow did not foresee a noticeable impact at the University of Oregon. “I think that the University has done a great job of reaching out to students, keeping them protected, almost to the extent that it seems like it’s an island that’s protected there.”

“If you look at a lot of the legislation that’s happening, and a lot of the conversation around criminal justice, victims are generally being left out of that, and so it’s a surprising and great step that we’re finally seeing some legislation focused on people who are victimized,” Perlow said.

“We want all Oregonians in every corner of the state to know our new law protects them,” Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum said in a media release. “This law will make Oregon stronger,” Rosenblum said.