Annapolis, Maryland- Maryland granted a new safeguard to its most downtrodden residents Thursday, becoming the first state in the nation to extend hate-crimes protection to homeless people.

Maryland is the first state to protect homeless people under its hate-crimes laws.(Photo: Getty Images)

    Lawmakers point to cases like the one in south Baltimore in 2001, where a group of young men embarked on what a judge later described as a "systematic cleansing" of homeless men in their neighborhood. Three victims were beaten to death and others were forced to relocate. Three men went to prison for the crime one of them dubbed "bum stomping."

    Such attacks on the homeless are becoming more common, advocates say. More than 800 homeless people have been violently attacked in the U.S. in the past decade, and at least 217 have died, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless. In 2007, there were 160 attacks, the most in a year since the group began collecting such data in 1999.

    The bill signed by Gov. Martin O'Malley adds homelessness to the protected categories under Maryland's hate-crimes law, which allows prosecutors to seek tougher penalties for those who target people because of race, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation.

    California, Texas and Ohio are considering similar bills, and legislation has been introduced in Congress.

    Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University-San Bernardino, said the law extends unprecedented protection to an increasingly vulnerable population.

    "The homeless are arguably the most victimized class, criminally, of anyone out there," Levin said.

    Most attacks are by teen boys or young men, according to research by the coalition and Levin's group. Technology has accelerated the trend, with "bum fighting" videos widely available on YouTube and other sites.

    Homeless people are more likely to be killed in bias-related attacks than victims from all existing hate crime categories combined, Levin said. Those who attack the homeless are most frequently "thrill offenders" who commit the crimes "almost as a sport," he said, while others are motivated by a desire to protect their turf and weed out undesirables.

    The coalition believes its statistics understate the extent of the problem because many such attacks go unreported.

    "Homeless folks are less likely to report crimes because they don't think that they will be investigated," said Michael Stoops, the coalition's acting executive director.

    The Maryland bill took an odd path to the governor's desk. Its sponsor, state Sen. Alex Mooney, is one of the General Assembly's most conservative members and had vociferously opposed adding sexual orientation to Maryland's hate-crimes statute.

    But Mooney, a Frederick County Republican, said he concluded that because hate crimes were well-established in Maryland law, other groups should be added even if they lack "political clout." Some conservatives believe hate-crimes legislation is unnecessary because all violent crimes could be considered hate crimes, but Mooney said he decided, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

    He said he wasn't motivated by a specific attack on a homeless person but learned about the problem through news reports about several in Maryland and in other states.

    "Every year you didn't pass the bill, attacks on the homeless kept happening," Mooney said Thursday.

    He introduced the bill four years running before it was finally approved. He had to overcome skepticism from some colleagues who believed his true goal was to water down the hate crimes law.

    Successful efforts by another lawmaker to add gender and disability to the hate-crimes law ultimately helped push Mooney's bill out of committee, and it was approved last month, on the final day of the legislative session. The new law takes effect Oct. 1.

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