Nov. 12 (UPI) — Hate crimes in the United States fell in 2018, but violent hate crimes increased, according to new statistics released Tuesday by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program Tuesday.
More than 16,000 law enforcement agencies around the country reported 7,120 criminal incidents and 8,496 related offenses connected to race, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender and gender identity in 2018.
The criminal hate crime incidents were slightly down from the 7,175 reported in 2017. Violent hate crimes — which includes killings, rapes, aggravated assaults and robberies — totaled 1,204, up from 1,183 the year before.
Hate crime homicides reached a 27-year high of 24, mostly from the 11 who were killed in the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh.
Of the single-bias incidents, 57.5 percent were motivated by a race, ethnicity or ancestry; 20.2 percent by religion; 17 percent by sexual orientation; 2.4 percent by gender identity; 2.3 percent by disability and 0.7 percent gender bias.
The FBI said of the 4,954 single-bias hate crime offenses that were motivated by race, ethnicity and ancestry, 46.9 percent were motivated by anti-black or African-American bias, 20.2 percent from anti-white bias, 13.0 percent from anti-Hispanic or Latino bias, 4.1 percent from anti-American Indian or Alaska Native bias and 3.5 percent from anti-Asian bias.
Another 3.4 percent were the result of bias against groups of individuals consisting of more than one race, 2 percent were classified as anti-Arab bias and 0.5 percent by bias of anti-Native Hawaiian or other Pacific islander.
Crimes against transgender or gender non-conforming people increased significantly in 2018. The FBI reported 157 incidents motivated by anti-transgender bias and 27 motivated by bias against gender non-conforming people, a jump from 118 for anti-transgender and 13 for gender non-conforming the year before.
There are still gaps in hate crime reporting, advocates have said. For example, incidents from the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, including the death of activist Heather Heyer, never made the FBI database, even though they were prosecuted as hate crimes.
