FBI: Hate crimes dropped slightly in '04

By Christopher Curtis - ©2005 Gay.com / PlanetOut.com Network

   The FBI has released hate crime statistics for 2004 that show a slight decrease in violence against LGBT victims, but a national anti-violence group questions the report's accuracy.

   According to the FBI, 15.6 percent of the hate crimes of 2004 were directed against the victims' perceived sexual orientation. In 2003, crimes motivated by sexual orientation made up 16.4 percent of the nation's hate crimes. In 2002 it was 16.7 percent.

   The report claims in 2004 there was 1,197 incidents of sexual orientation hate crimes with 1,482 victims. In 2003, there were 1,239 incidents of hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation with 1,479 victims. In 2002 the FBI reported 1,244 incidents of similar hate crimes with 1,513 victims.

   Of the 1,482 victims, 61 percent were targeted because they were male homosexuals. Anti-lesbian attacks accounted for 14 percent of the attacks. Attacks made on homosexuals at large accounted for 20 percent of the attacks. Anti-bisexual violence accounted for 1 percent, while attacks against heterosexuals made up 2 percent of the recorded data.

   The report has been published annually since Congress passed the Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990. The law directed the Attorney General to collect data “about crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation or ethnicity.”

   Clarence Patton, executive director of the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP), dismissed the report as “The Book of Zeroes.”

   “If you go by county by county, you will see zero after zero after zero, and what this means is not that there weren't any hate crimes, but no one reported them,” he said.

   “In 2003, the FBI said there were 725 hate crimes in California ,” he pointed out. “At the same time, there were 433 incidents reported to us in Los Angeles and 317 in the San Francisco Bay Area.”

   “The FBI numbers comes from local law enforcement submitting data to them. Many law enforcement agencies don't have to do it, so the FBI doesn't get data from everywhere,” Patton said. “A lot of folks from the community are more willing to report to a community-based organization rather than law enforcement.”

   “Another thing that skews the numbers is that even in jurisdictions with hate crime laws, oftentimes the cases don't get classified as hate crimes,” Patton added. “Sometimes it's poor police work, sometimes it's lazy police work. Sometimes it is a lack of clear understanding about what the hate crime policy is.”

   Patton believes the police need to develop a closer relationship with police organizations so they have a more precise picture of hate crimes in America.

   He also thinks a new federal hate crime law needs to be drafted to make the reporting of such crimes mandatory for police agencies.

   “We won't know how to solve the problem until we know how big the problem is,” Patton said.

   Last month the U.S. House of Representatives passed a hate crimes bill that would give law enforcement officers the tools to prosecute crimes directed at a victim because he or she is lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. The measure still must pass the Senate.

Posted October 18, 2005