FBI's hate crimes report raises questions

Despite increasing concerns about growing hate crimes across the United States, a federal tally found bias crimes declined in 2021, but the report is being questioned because thousands of law enforcement agencies did not provide data on hate crimes to the FBI last year.

An annual FBI report released on Monday found there were 7,262 hate crimes last year, down from 8,263 in 2020, the biggest decrease in two decades.

But only about 65 percent of local police departments reported hate crimes last year, down from more than 90 percent the year before.

That means it is impossible to draw any meaningful conclusions about hate crime trends year-over-year, the FBI said on Monday.

Thousands of jurisdictions did not report crime data under the National Incident-Based Reporting System, which federal authorities have phased in since 2016 with the hope of gaining more crime data.

The nation's two largest cities, New York and Los Angeles, did not provide data. The third-largest city, Chicago, reported zero. New York and California have typically contributed the highest numbers of hate crimes.

This year, the FBI moved to the new reporting system, and only about 11,883 of 18,812 agencies have incorporated the system into their networks.

In Florida, where 109 hate crimes were reported in 2020, only two of the state's 757 law enforcement agencies submitted data to the FBI last year and one hate crime was reported.

The number of hate crimes in California fell from 1,339 in 2020 to 73 in 2021, as 15 of 740 police agencies uploaded data. Hate crimes in New York dropped from 463 in 2020 to 62 in 2021, as 124 of 593 jurisdictions submitted data to the FBI.

'Woefully inadequate'

But the new reporting system does provide additional information gathered about victims, offenders, and those arrested, including age, sex and race as well as a description of any relationship between victim and offender.

In a statement, Ted Deutch, CEO of the American Jewish Committee, called the new FBI report "woefully inadequate". He noted 35 major US cities reported zero hate crimes last year.

The FBI defines a hate crime as attacks prompted by a victim's "race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity".

According to a survey released by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, hate crimes increased by 15 to 25 percent in 52 jurisdictions between 2020 and 2021.

The steepest increases were in attacks against Asian Americans, the center's director Brian Levin was quoted by The New York Times as saying.

"The data need not be perfect," Levin told the Los Angeles Times. "But when it is this incomplete, it becomes an obstacle, because the average American will look at it and say, 'Oh, OK, hate crimes are down'."

According to a Brandeis Center news release, other monitors have "uniformly reported substantial increases" in anti-Semitic hate crimes last year — in contrast to the FBI's data. Last year, the Anti-Defamation League received more reports of anti-Semitic incidents than in any other year on record.

The Anti-Defamation League said FBI data suggested that if more jurisdictions had reported their figures for anti-Semitic attacks, the report "likely would have shown record-high numbers".

"The failure by major states and cities across the country to report hate crime data essentially — and inexcusably — erases the lived experience of marginalized communities across the country," Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the league, said in a statement on Monday.