The department wants to build awareness about the hotline, which connects victims to services

By Lynne Terry, Oregon Capital Chronicle

With hate crimes rising in Oregon, the Department of Justice has launched a campaign to support minority communities and spread awareness of the state’s nonemergency hotline for reporting bias and hate crimes.

The campaign, dubbed “You belong,” will run for three months and include six public service announcements and ads in English, Spanish, Korean, Mandarin, Arabic, Russian, Vietnamese and Tagalog, the national language of the Philippines. They’ll be aired on the radio and television, streamed on YouTube, painted across buses and posted on Facebook, while an influencer will get word out on TikTok and Instagram.

The campaign also will include billboards in English, Spanish and Vietnamese in Portland, Gresham, Salem and Eugene.

“Every Oregonian should feel like they belong here, but acts of bias and hatred rob people of that sense of belonging,” Ellen Rosenblum, Oregon’s attorney general, said in a release. “To anyone who has experienced acts of hatred and bias, you are not alone. You belong.” 

The hotline, the first of its kind nationwide, is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific time, Monday through Friday. It was launched in 2020, following the passage of Senate Bill 577 in 2019. That law defined a hate or bias crime as intimidation or harm of another person or their property motivated by the person’s actual or perceived protected class, including race, color, disability, religion, national origin, sexual orientation and gender identity. Punishment for bias crimes vary: Depending on the situation, they can be a misdemeanor or a felony, and state data shows that cases are fairly evenly divided between the two.

The confidential line was set up, in part, to help victims get services. Advocates, with services in more than 240 languages, are trained in trauma care, and sometimes callers just want to talk. They also direct callers to government and community services that range from counseling to help filing a police report. Operators also collect reports on the crimes for The Oregon Criminal Justice Commission. 

According to the commission’s dashboard, reported hate crimes in Oregon have more than tripled from about 1,100 in 2020 to 3,600 reports last year. The crimes are most prevalent in the populous Portland area, with about 2,300 reports filed over the past four years in Multnomah County and more than 700 each in Clackamas and Washington counties. More than 1,000 reports also have been filed in Lane County, and more than 800 in Marion County. Jackson County had 223 reports over the past four years.

Most bias crimes involve harassment, the data shows, and a majority of crimes are prompted by race, with Black people being the biggest racial target. Fay Stetz-Waters, the Department of Justice’s director of civil rights and social justice, said that one reason is likely Oregon’s racist past. The state’s early Black exclusion laws tried to keep Black people from residing in the state, and later they suffered widespread discrimination, especially in housing.

“It’s part of our history,” Stetz-Waters said. “It’s perpetuated throughout our communities and throughout our culture. It’s in our schools. It’s in our work. It’s in our places of business.”

Hispanics are the second biggest target, with LGBTQ+ people suffering about as many attacks.

Stetz-Waters said the crimes are somewhat predictable: She expects an uptick in May during Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month and then in June, which is Pride Month.

“As we hit the summer when more people are out, when we have more public events where people like to show up and show off, I expect these numbers to rise,” Stetz-Waters said.

The line itself is also attacked.

“We’ve been getting more than 100 robocalls a day,” Stetz-Waters said. “We’re getting people reporting nonsense, nothing related to hate or bias (and) asking questions that don’t have anything to do with our work. And I think it’s just to tie up the line so that someone who has need cannot use the line.”

The department also takes reports online, and the website has a chat feature.

The unit began small: At the beginning, Stetz-Waters, who’s a lawyer with a law enforcement background, answered the phones. Now, it has a staff of 11, including a prosecutor who helps officials in smaller counties understand the law and prosecute cases. Another staff member is an investigator with law enforcement experience who helps smaller communities with investigations.

The unit also has a $100,000 victims’ fund allocated by the Legislature for the current two-year budget to help with various needs. 

The hotline awareness campaign is the department’s second. Stetz-Waters said the first one in 2020 to let people know about the service did not reach a wide audience. It came during the pandemic, when people were often socially isolated and focused on COVID.

She hopes this campaign increases awareness of the service and fosters a sense of inclusiveness.

“We want to build connections so people stay,” Stetz-Waters said. “We want people to recognize (they’re) not alone. You belong.”

Lynne Terry has more than 30 years of journalism experience, including a recent stint as editor of The Lund Report, a highly regarded health news site. She reported on health and food safety in her 18 years at The Oregonian, was a senior producer at Oregon Public Broadcasting and Paris correspondent for National Public Radio for nine years.