LPD report: Three bias crimes recorded in 2022
The report is not a full accounting of bias incidents in the community, but it sheds some light on rising anti-LGBTQ sentiments on the local and national stage.
Laramie Police Chief Brian Browne said his agency recorded three bias crimes in 2022 — a more or less typical number for a city that has seen between zero to four bias crimes each year since 2019.
All three of last year’s bias crimes involved vandalism:
On Jan. 26, a pride flag was vandalized;
On Feb. 9, the words “zone” and “queer” were spray painted on private property;
On July 26, the word “queer” was spray painted on a vehicle.
LPD never identified a suspect in any of the cases and all three are closed pending further information.
While the vandalism of a pride flag can safely be considered bias-motivated, Browne said the instances of graffiti were not necessarily motivated by hate. One of the illegally-painted words was “queer” — which can be, and historically has been, a slur used against members of the LGBTQ community. But the word has also been widely reclaimed by the LGBTQ community, especially its younger members — meaning the graffiti incidents could alternatively be examples of “tagging,” with the word “queer” serving as self-ID.
“To be 100 percent honest with you, it’s very difficult to determine whether a crime is bias-related,” Browne told the Laramie Reporter. “And the reason for that is because we can’t necessarily determine the intent of the individual who committed the crime — especially with vandalisms because they’re reported after the fact.”
He added it’s difficult to identify suspects in cases of vandalism because there’s usually a large window of time during which the crime could have occurred. That makes it challenging to narrow down who was in the area or ask neighbors about what they might have seen.
Browne delivered his department’s annual bias crime report to the Laramie City Council during a work session Tuesday.
The chief made the distinction between bias crime and bias incidents. While the vandalisms would be considered crimes in their own right even before the consideration of biased motivations, there’s a wide variety of biased activity that doesn’t rise to the level of a crime. A bias incident occurs anytime someone targets another person for their race, color, religion, gender, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression and/or national origin.
The 2022 report shows zero bias incidents in Laramie, but Browne said this reflects underreporting rather than the complete absence of non-criminal bias incidents.
“I think the public in general is more hesitant to report those types of incidents to the police,” he said. “The reason being there’s a lot of freedom of speech issues related to those. We document them in an incident report simply so that we have the numbers and have an idea of exactly what’s going on in our community should we need to later fill in some other kind of investigation.”
But no one reported bias incidents to the Laramie Police Department in 2022, according to the report. Browne told the council he checked with the Albany County Sheriff’s Office and University of Wyoming Police Department and that neither reported any bias crimes last year.
“I think it’s important that we look at it with our partners in mind because they’re also a part of our bigger community,” Browne said.
UW provides the perfect example of police reports failing to capture the full picture. In December, the LGBTQ community on campus weathered a string of targeted harassment — from individual students disrupting queer-centered events to one church elder’s specific, public targeting of an individual trans student.
UWPD responded to the scene of the latter (and at a later date, the church elder was eventually banned from tabling in the student union for one year), but the high-profile incident was not recorded as a crime. The church elder faces no criminal charges and is still allowed on campus.
When it comes to anti-gay and anti-trans bias specifically, there’s further reason for underreporting: a long, complicated history between the queer community and police power. A seminal moment in this country’s LGBTQ history involved drag queens and others in the community literally battling police in the street, sometimes using bricks as weapons, in defense of a community space that had come under attack by both politicians and police.
Even today, queer people face elevated rates of discrimination, harassment, profiling, violence and even entrapment by police. The situation inspires fierce debate within the community about the presence of police at Pride Month parades and events — and undoubtedly leads many to be hesitant about dialing 9-1-1, even if someone is shouting slurs at them or targeting them for harassment.
To the council, Browne said he would encourage residents to report incidents of bias even if they don’t rise to the level of crime so his department can have a better accounting of what’s going on in the community.
If residents observe some biased incident taking place — be it vandalism or verbal harassment — Browne offered the same instructions the department gives off-duty officers.
“What I’ll ask our citizens not to do is intervene (but) to be the best witness they can, get as much information as they can,” he said. “They can document with a video on their phone, taking notes on their phone — cars, license plates, what the person’s wearing. All those things help us identify people at a later date if it rises to that level.”
The Laramie Police Department received about 22,800 calls for service in 2022 — a figure Browne said is typical and consistent. Nationally, the vast majority — 65 percent — of bias incidents targeted individuals for their race, ethnicity or ancestry, according to U.S. Department of Justice information Browne shared during the council meeting. About 15 percent of incidents targeted individuals for their sexual orientation.