Hightstown High School Students Take Aim At Feds' Handling Of Hate Crime Information

HIGHTSTOWN, NJ — The Civil Rights Cold Case Record Collections Act of 2017 may have been introduced by an Illinois Congressman, but it has a heavy local flavor. The bill, introduced by Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Illinois), was ghost-written several Hightstown students. It addresses unsolved hate crimes.

The bill was introduced on March 1. After that, juniors and seniors at the high school persuaded Rep. Bonnie Watson-Coleman (D-12) to sign on as a co-sponsor, according to The Trentonian. They also visited Republicans in D.C. to ask them to support the bill.

The purpose of the bill is to make it easier for private investigators to solve civil rights cold cases. The U.S. Department of Justice has been directed to solve all cases in which the victims were killed or disappeared as the result of racially motivated crimes before 1980, according to the report.

However, very few cases have actually been solved, in part because it is difficult to obtain information from the federal government. A private citizen can request information via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), but those requests often take more than a year to fill, and often return heavily redacted, or censored.

In 2013, the Justice Department reported that about 83 percent of information provided to private citizens was wrongfully redacted.

Students in Stuart “Stu” Wexler’s AP government and politics class at Hightstown High School decided to craft the proposed legislation, but Wexler is surprised by how far the legislation has advanced, according to the report.

The bill was introduced on March 1, and assigned to a congressional committee. According to Predict Gov, it has about a 2 percent chance of being enacted.

To read the full text of the bill, visit govtrack.us.