Sam Amico
A revised FBI reports shows that hate crimes are on the rise, having surged by 11.6 percent in 2021. The report was revised after it had proven to be lacking key data from major US cities.
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Chicago, in particular, was shown to have considerably more such crimes than the initial report, released back in December. Los Angeles and New York also had updated numbers.
FBI officials said the updated report offered a clearer picture of crimes committed based on biases against race, religion, ethnicity, disability and sexual orientation.
The new report added information from more than 3,000 law enforcement agencies that represented communities or cities with populations totaling more than 87 million people.
“The FBI’s supplemental report demonstrates our unwavering commitment to work with our state and local partners to increase reporting and provide a more complete picture of hate crimes nationwide,” Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said. “We will not stop here: We are continuing to work with state and local law enforcement agencies across the country to increase the reporting of hate crime statistics to the FBI. Hate crimes and the devastation they cause communities have no place in this country.”
Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at the California State University, San Bernardino, indicated the new report is fairly damning.
“This is a reflection of pent-up anger that has been festering amid a toxic social media and political climate,” Levin said, via USA Today. “We’re in a new era of record breaking levels.”
The latest report boosted the number of participating agencies to 14,859, USA Today reported, or about 80 percent of all agencies across the country.
