St. Louis Vandalized Cemetery Town Mulls Anti-Hate-Crime Resolution
Image by Getty Images
(JTA) — The city council of a suburb of St. Louis is considering an anti-hate crime resolution which would create a database of hate crime offenders.
The resolution was introduced to the University City council on Monday by Councilman Rod Jennings.
Jennings told local media he had been considering introducing such legislation since November, long before the vandalism attack in University City’s Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery, in which 154 headstones were knocked over or damaged.
The resolution would create a hate crime database system similar to a sex offender registry. Anyone who has been convicted of a hate crime that moves into or out of University City would be in a database for all citizens to access.
Police still have not identified any suspects in the case, nor have they definitively decided to label the attack as a hate crime.
“I think it is important that we know they are living close to our schools and our children, close to our resident and our homes, close to every mosque synagogue and church,” Jennings told the St Louis Post-Dispatch.
The city council will vote on the measure at its regular meeting in two weeks on March 13.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
