D.C. police reviewing hate crime report; correction eyed

Chris Dyer, director of the D.C. Office of GLBT Affairs, has replied to an inquiry I sent him as to whether the Metropolitan Police Department will be correcting its report on bias-related crimes in the District to include as a separate category those based on gender identity or expression:

I've been told that MPD will be reviewing its data to identify those that are based on gender identity. They will be starting with this year's crimes, and working backwards. The goal was to see if they could do this back through the 2005 data.

This is a welcome development, however tardy. Last Friday, at D.C. Councilmember Phil Mendelson's hearing on hate crimes, I testified for GLAA, criticizing MPD's failure to track anti-trans hate crimes as required by D.C. law. On Monday, Bob Summersgill reinforced and expanded upon GLAA's testimony. Thanks to Chris Dyer for looking into the matter for us.