REDMOND — The image captured by Redmond police is frightening.

A slain raccoon lies slumped in a pool of blood against the door of the mayor’s private office in early June. A hand-scrawled note next to it uses racist language to make “veiled threats” of harm toward the city’s first and only Black councilor as well as the white mayor, apparently because of his association with him in this Central Oregon town where 0.2% of the population is Black.

The ugly scene immediately drew admonition. The mayor called the perpetrators “wackos.” The police chief said he’d work “expeditiously” to hold the culprit “accountable.” The targeted councilor, Clifford Evelyn, described it as “a hate crime, plain and simple.”

Raccoon imagery has a long racist history in the U.S., and Evelyn saw the animal carcass as a possible threat on his life.

“It was crystal clear what they were trying to say: ‘The dead raccoon, this could be you,’” Evelyn said.

More than four months later, whoever did this hasn’t been caught. And even if they were, prosecutors probably would be able to pursue only charges of misdemeanor animal abuse and property vandalism — not a hate crime. Oregon law doesn’t define what happened as such.

That’s even though laws enacted by Oregon’s neighbors, California and Washington, most likely would.

Oregon is a bona fide national leader in supporting hate crime victims, such as by operating a hotline to report incidents. But when it comes to legislating strong hate crime laws, Oregon lags far behind many other states, an analysis by The Oregonian/OregonLive of all 50 states plus the District of Columbia found.

State law criminalizes the most violent, offensive and destructive displays of hate — making it illegal to injure, slap, shove or spit upon victims or damage or vandalize their property to the point of creating a “substantial inconvenience.”

State law and higher court decisions criminalize threats too, but only if the threats are detailed enough to portend immediate “serious physical injury” and not wounds that hurt a little, heal quickly or occur at some unspecified date in the future.

The law also criminalizes threats to property, but those threats must promise “substantial damage” and not just damage that would be easy or cheap to repair.

These limitations mean the state often ignores many fear-instilling acts of bigotry.

In Evelyn’s case, the law would make it difficult if not impossible to convict the culprit for a hate crime unless the dead raccoon had been left on his property so Evelyn — the target of the racist episode — would be the one inconvenienced with cleaning it up. The law also would require the note’s author to be more precise: Not just implying that Evelyn was in danger, but by clearly spelling out that he would suffer severe injuries imminently.

Evelyn wonders how the racism entrenched in Oregon since its inception is ever going to recede if such threats aren’t defined for what they are: unacceptable acts of hate.

He touches on a point commonly seen by the state’s historically marginalized communities but often overlooked by the state’s white majority: Oregon tolerates a wide range of bigoted acts that continue to make the state an intimidating place for them to live.

Evelyn has no confidence the Oregon Legislature will act to change the law.

But he has a few allies.

Rep. Ricki Ruiz, D-Gresham, said he and many members of the Oregon Legislature’s BIPOC Caucus are familiar with the law’s shortcomings from personal experiences.

Like many of his colleagues, Ruiz said he’s received multiple threats making racist statements — in his case — about his Mexican heritage and promising harm, including from one person who posted to social media that they wanted to use a shotgun to “stop him,” should they ever cross paths. Ruiz said the threats feel more frightening now that he has a wife and a young daughter.

“We find out these are my neighbors,” Ruiz said. “These are people who I might run into at the grocery store, or I might run into while pumping gas. It is daunting to me that some of these things that I feel are life-threatening can’t get prosecuted.”

Ruiz’s chief of staff, who also is of Mexican descent, said someone texted him photos of mutilated bodies with the warning, “This will happen if you mess with us.” Yet many police agencies and district attorneys’ offices say they can’t file charges for those types of threats.

Ruiz said he plans to push hard for amendments to the law — so everyone feels protected and welcome in Oregon.

“We should aspire to change this as soon as possible,” he said.

Many threats aren’t crimes

In a review of scores of hate-fueled incidents in Oregon in recent years, The Oregonian/OregonLive found many that didn’t meet the state’s narrow definition of hate crimes.

Prosecutors in Washington County say a driver who called a Black woman “a f— (racist slur)” and then repeatedly spat upon her car in a Tualatin parking lot committed no hate crime under state law. That’s because it’s not illegal to shout racist slurs. And a deputy district attorney wrote that wiping off the spit, “while gross,” didn’t cause a “substantial inconvenience,” as required to charge the perpetrator with a hate crime.

Likewise, prosecutors in Washington County said they couldn’t file hate crime charges in the case of an Iraqi immigrant who said his Beaverton neighbors, their friend and even their 3-year-old child had called him a racist slur used to deride Arab Americans. Although the victim said the slurs were ongoing, he said he sought the help of police and prosecutors when the neighbors’ friend stood on his property line, stared into his house, shouted the racist slur again and declared he was going to “f— him up.”

Prosecutors said, in part, that they couldn’t charge the individual with any crimes because the alleged threat could describe an array of actions, including beating up or punching the victim. Under Oregon case law, those aren’t typically considered acts that induce “serious physical injuries” such as permanent disfigurement or death.

The Arab American man told The Oregonian/OregonLive that he learned the law isn’t there to protect him. So he uprooted his life and moved.

“It’s to the point sometimes that I just give up,” he said.

Such reports are common.

Prosecutors in Multnomah County said they couldn’t pursue criminal charges against a homeless man who reportedly was camped outside a Black man’s apartment near Providence Park in Southwest Portland, called the victim a racist slur and then yelled “I’ll kill a (racist slur)!” while waving a butter knife in the air. In assessing the actual threat to the victim, prosecutors wrote, the man didn’t step across the street and approach the victim – meaning it didn’t appear the man was going to make good on his statement that instant.

But the victim told The Oregonian/OregonLive that he lived in fear that the man, who clearly had unmet mental health needs, might emerge from his tent the next time he saw him and stab him. The victim said all he wanted was the state to get the man mental health treatment — and if that meant prosecuting him, so be it.

“To be honest, I don’t think they understand what African Americans go through in the Northwest,” he said.

Prosecutors in Yamhill County said they couldn’t charge a man who in a voicemail praised the Newberg School District for deterring Black, Jewish and LGBTQ+ students from attending its schools after it banned educators from displaying Black Lives Matter and pride symbols. The man also exclaimed “White power! F—ing (racist slur for Black people) and (antisemitic slur) and (homophobic slur). …Kill them. Kill them all.”

The district attorney’s office said the message didn’t qualify as a direct threat because the caller didn’t state that he was going to kill members of these groups and he left the message on a district voicemail, not with the individuals he purportedly wanted dead.

Yesenia Miranda, a former Newberg schools employee who reported the voicemail to a supervisor, said she was disappointed a district resource officer said police could do nothing but tell the man to knock it off.

Crestfallen with the school board for a policy that she believed promoted prejudice, Miranda said she quit last year.

“I could not work in an environment that fostered hate,” she said.

The policy has since been rescinded.

Throughout the state, people with racist or antisemitic views have stenciled, etched or spray-painted swastikas or “KKK” on public or private property. That’s not a hate crime under Oregon law — unless the vandals targeted the owners or tenants of the property because, for example, they knew they were Jewish or Black and they held ill will against them for those reasons.

Similarly, Black Lives Matter signs and pride flags have been stolen, burned, torn apart or defaced, but prosecutors say they can’t charge the perpetrators with hate crimes under current state laws because in many cases the owners aren’t Black or LGBTQ+.

Yet the signs’ owners say they certainly felt what happened were racist acts and should be recognized as such.

Xia Wang, who grew up in China but immigrated to the United States as an adult, said she believes her Black Lives Matter sign in the front yard of her Eugene home was stolen, its replacement vandalized and her house bombarded with paintballs because she is a person of color standing in solidarity with Black communities. But prosecutors say even if they caught the thief, they have no basis for filing hate crime charges.

“I don’t know what else it could be other than racism,” Wang said. To say otherwise, she added, “it’s ridiculous.”

Oregon and the rest of the nation

Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia have enacted hate crime laws meant to identify bigotry for what it is. They hand out stiffer punishments or, in a small number of cases, order anti-bias education.

Just two states don’t have hate crime laws, South Carolina and Wyoming, where the brutal beating death of gay college student Matthew Shepard sparked federal hate crime legislation.

But in those states with hate crimes statutes, the breadth of their laws and the frequency at which they’re enforced vary widely. A lack of prosecutions appears to be a problem everywhere.

Nearly every state protects a core list of traits: race, religion, ethnicity and national origin. Most states also protect disability and sexual orientation, though some include only gender identity.

Oregon includes all of the above in its law.

But Oregon’s definition of a hate crime is much more restrictive than many.

At least two-thirds of states — including Washington, Idaho and Colorado — don’t require that an offender threaten “serious physical injury,” such as stabbing or killing, in order to meet the definition of a hate crime.

And although some states don’t criminalize threats against property, many do. Among those, at least 20 say any amount of damage is enough to meet the threshold for a hate crime. Oregon, on the other hand, requires those threats to be for “substantial damage.”

A few states — such as California, Maine and West Virginia — don’t even necessitate that one person threaten to hurt another or vandalize their property. The offender only has to threaten to impede another person’s constitutional rights to freely live their lives — such as dine at a restaurant, drive on the freeway, earn a living or go to school.

A small number of states — including California, Iowa and Nebraska — don’t require that the victim be a member of a targeted group. Instead, they only must be associated with a member of the targeted group. For example, someone who assaults a white person for marching in support of Black Lives Matter could be punished for a hate crime.

California has one of the most sweeping laws in the nation.

A Los Angeles-area man who yelled racist slurs at a Black driver and threw his yogurt at the driver’s car, causing the driver to swerve, was convicted of a hate crime. That same defendant was convicted of another hate crime for grabbing a Black Lives Matter sign out of the hands of a Latina woman and tearing it apart.

The man was sentenced to community service, prohibited from owning a gun for 10 years and required to visit the Museum of Tolerance in LA.

In the Bay Area, a man who reportedly made anti-Asian and homophobic statements about two people eating at an In-N-Out Burger, then stated “Normally, I could spit in your face” and “See you outside” was charged with a hate crime — even though he didn’t touch the victims, threaten to cause substantial damage to their property or threaten to put them in a hospital bed. The case is still pending, but legal experts say the charges appear to be supported by California law.

In Washington state, a fellow grocery store shopper who yelled racist slurs at a Black woman and her children — then threatened to punch the woman — was charged with a hate crime. In Oregon, the threat of a punch wouldn’t meet the definition of serious physical injury, prosecutors say.

The case, incidentally, was dismissed this past week — not because the charge wasn’t well-grounded in Washington law, but because the victim decided she didn’t want to relive the horrors of the encounter during trial, prosecutors say.

Prosecutors in New York City say they were completely within their laws to charge a man who allegedly drew a swastika in public spaces — including on a pillar at the entrance to city hall and on the bronze “Charging Bull” statue on Wall Street — with a hate crime. Unlike in Oregon, New York prosecutors do not need to prove the property was targeted because of the owners’ race or religion.

Brian Levin, founder of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism in southern California, said Oregon is ahead of many U.S. states because it’s one of the few operating a hate crimes support hotline for victims and it does a better job than most by tracking hate crimes. Its prosecution numbers, though low, aren’t as dismal as those in many states, including California, he said.

But Levin said Oregon’s definition of a hate crime doesn’t go as far as many other states.

In the case of the Muslim man who reported his neighbors’ friend’s threats and racist slurs or the dead raccoon left with the threatening note in Redmond, Levin thinks both should be hate crimes.

“That is such a visceral threat,” Levin said of the dead raccoon. “It seems incredibly myopic” not to define it as a hate crime.

A few obstacles might stand in the way of change: One, convincing a majority of state legislators that there’s a need. And two, the state’s appellate courts.

Josh Marquis, a former Clatsop County prosecutor who helped structure Oregon’s first hate crime law in 1981, said the state Court of Appeals and Supreme Court have a higher bar than many — if not all — states in the name of free speech. And that has led the Legislature to act cautiously in expanding Oregon’s hate crimes law. Those judges have said, for example, that a threat must generate a “sudden sense of danger” in order to be prosecuted, not simply a feeling that the danger might arrive someday.

Even if the Legislature wanted to toughen the state’s hate crime law, Marquis said, “The question is, will the courts? I think what you’re seeing is the Legislature thinking of it like walking onto drying cement, saying ‘Hmm, is this dry enough? Can I put my foot here?’”

Evelyn, the Redmond city councilor, said it comes down to the political will to change the law to fully acknowledge the bigotry and violent undertones that are still alive and well in Oregon. Though state law doesn’t define the dead raccoon and intimidating note as a hate crime, he certainly saw it as alarming. And the only reason he was singled out? He’s a Black man in a white town.

He said he’s installed multiple surveillance cameras around his home.

“I worry about the safety of my family,” Evelyn said.

Evelyn, who moved to Redmond six years ago, said the experience has been life-altering.

“I now have to look over my shoulder,” Evelyn said. “This is what I’ve got to deal with all of the time.”

Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian, File Rep. Ricki Ruiz, D-Gresham, on the Oregon House floor in January 2023. Ruiz said he’s received multiple threats making racist statements about his Mexican heritage and promising harm. Ruiz said the threats feel more frightening now that he has a wife and a young daughter.