Photo Courtesy of Sen. Gillibrand’s Office
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and fellow pols are urging a $5 million increase in federal anti-terror funding.
By Forum Staff
Elected officials and faith leaders on Sunday announced a new push for additional federal anti-terror funding to help safeguard civil, religious, and community institutions.
Citing a rise in the number of reported hate crimes “throughout the New York area and across the country,” U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) along with Sens. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) urged a $5 million increase for a total funding level of at least $25 million in the Fiscal Year 2017 Homeland Security appropriations bill for the Urban Area Security Initiative Non-Profit Security Grant Program. The additional funding would help ensure the protection of non-profit facilities and places of worship from potential threats, Gillbrand said.
“No New Yorker should ever live or worship in fear,” she added. “We can’t stand idly by and let these incidents go unanswered. We must make sure our places of worship, our community centers and non-profits have every resource necessary to be protected and safe from threats. I’m fighting for this additional Homeland Security funding because we must stand strong against threats, hatred and attacks against our community institutions.”
In November, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released the 2015 Hate Crimes Statistics report. According to the agency, law enforcement agencies submitted incident reports involving 5,850 criminal incidents and 6,885 related offenses as being motivated by bias toward race, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender, and gender identity in 2015. There were 5,818 single-bias incidents involving 7,121 victims, according to the report. A percent distribution of victims by bias type showed that 59.2 percent of victims were targeted because of the offenders’ race/ethnicity/ancestry bias, 19.7 percent were targeted because of the offenders’ religious bias, and 17.7 percent were victimized because of the offenders’ sexual-orientation bias. Victims targeted because of the offenders’ bias against gender identity accounted for 1.7 percent of victims of single-bias incidents; disabilities, 1.2 percent; and gender, 0.4 percent.
The senators wrote a letter to federal appropriators requesting the additional $5 million be included in the federal government funding bill currently being debated in the Senate and set to be voted on next week.
“’No Jews,’ swastikas, and racist messages have been spray-painted on streets, buildings, and sidewalks at locations across New York City, White Plains, and Ramapo, New Jersey, and in several other cities. Mosques across the country have received threatening letters and have been vandalized while women in hijabs have been assaulted. Meanwhile, members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community face harassment and physical attacks,” the pols wrote. “The rise in hate crimes and pervasiveness of extremist ideology poses a threat to people around the world. This grant program provides essential resources to ensuring the safety and security of these non-profit facilities. It is of paramount concern that we provide our communities with the highest levels of funding available to support these programs. They provide critical support for physical security enhancements to sites at high risk of an attack. With credible threats becoming a daily occurrence against these sites there is a strong need to upgrade the security to these vulnerable locations.”
