Hate crime fines, jail time could triple under new City Council bill

Two-hundred forty days after a racially motivated shooting at a Dollar General rocked the Jacksonville community, City Council members stood in front of the victims’ memorial supporting legislation to strengthen local hate crime penalties.

A bill introduced to council Tuesday night could triple the fines or jail time for certain ordinance violations in the city if they relate to hatred or violence toward others.

“I had members of the community telling me that we expect something, especially when three lives were taken away by someone who had a hate in their heart,” Jimmy Peluso, a City Council member who introduced the legislation, said Monday. “What are we going to do about it? At the very least, we can do this.”

The ordinance builds on existing city code and increases the penalties specifically if the violation “was committed with the primary purpose of expressing, or attempting to promote, animosity, hostility or malice” toward individuals based on their race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, national origin, age or disability.

This extends to highly specific parts of the code such as the littering ordinance and the ordinance passed last year that banned light projections on buildings without the owner’s permission.

The expansions are in response to an increase in circulation of hateful pamphlets and symbols, including swastikas and calls to violence, that were projected onto buildings downtown last year.

The goal is to deter people from hate crimes, but the council cannot “legislate morality,” Council member Rahman Johnson, another one of the bill’s sponsors, said.

The ordinance will pertain to violence or threats of violence, but hate speech is generally protected by the First Amendment. Peluso said he believed the bill is tailored to pass constitutional muster.

“Someone can say something hateful. I mean, this doesn't ban people from being bad people,” Peluso said. “But it's only if they're using their speech to entice others to cause violence.”

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The shooting at Dollar General last year was a frank example, Peluso said, of someone who was “clearly inspired” by hate in his daily life. The goal for council was to mitigate hate “as much as possible.”

Faith leaders and state legislators joined council members in support of the bill Monday, and Rep. Angie Nixon said she would advocate for something similar in the Legislature. But, there would have to be a desire for it.

Nixon wanted to encourage her fellow politicians to only speak “life and love and dignity and humanity into everything that we do.”

“People are looking up to us, and the rhetoric, the divisive rhetoric that has been coming out of the mouths of many elected officials has a direct correlation, based on studies that I've read, as it relates to the uptick in hate crimes,” Nixon said. “And so we have to do more.”

The bill will be introduced at the City Council meeting Tuesday and go through the typical six-week voting process.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Jacksonville City Council considers tripling hate crime penalties