An increasing number of law enforcement agencies are opting not to share statistics about hate crimes with the FBI as hate crimes are skyrocketing, Axios reports. The decline in reporting hurts efforts to document violence accurately against Asian Americans, Black Americans, and LGBTQ+ people, advocates and U.S. Justice Department officials say.
The number of police agencies participating in the FBI’s hate crimes report declined in 2020, the third straight year of decreases. About 88 percent of cities don't report hate crimes data.
More than 12,000 law enforcement agencies reported zero hate crimes. The list includes police departments in Miami, Little Rock, and Huntsville, Al.
Just a handful of cities and towns in states like Alabama, Arkansas, and Florida bothered to report hate crimes in 2020.
Even with the lack of reporting, the number of hate crimes reported nationwide spiked to the highest level in nearly two decades in 2020.
More than 60 percent of reported hate crimes were motivated by race and ethnicity and, of those, more than half targeted Blacks, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke told the Senate Judiciary Committee last week.
FBI hasn't reported statistics for 2021, but a new study found that reports of hate crimes skyrocketed again last year in more than a dozen large cities, with a record number of Asian Americans saying they were targeted. The study was done by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University.
Submitting hate crime data is voluntary, and some cities, including Los Angeles and New York, have improved their reporting, said center director Brian Levin.