Hate crimes rise 3rd straight year
Anti-Semitism in Colorado contributing to surge of incidents in U.S.
The number of hate crimes reported in the U.S. rose by 17 percent last year, and while overall reports of biasmotivated incidents in Colorado remain flat, the number of reported anti-Semitic hate crimes in this state doubled in 2017.
Across the country, law enforcement agencies reported 7,175 hate crimes last year, up from 6,121 the previous year, according to FBI data released Tuesday. It was the third consecutive year that reports of hate crimes increased nationally.
The number of anti-Semitic crimes reported nationally rose about 37 percent last year, though crimes motivated by racism against African-Americans remained the most common. The 2017 data also reflects the increased number of agencies that contributed data to the report — 895 more than in 2016.
The number of anti-Jewish hate crimes reported in Colorado doubled from six in 2016 to 13 in 2017, according to FBI data collected by the Anti-Defamation League, though the overall number of reported bias-motivated crimes in the state remained steady compared to previous years.
The FBI’s annual report was published two weeks after a gunman entered a Pittsburgh synagogue and killed 11 people before telling law enforcement that “all Jews must die.” The publication also follows a spate of incidents in Colorado, including a demonstration Sunday by white nationalists in Denver’s Civic Center park, uproar over a flag with a swastika that flew outside a Fruita home last week and an increase in the amount of white supremacist propaganda posted across the Front Range.
“Words have consequences,” said Scott Levin, regional director for the Anti-Defamation League Mountain States Region. “We need responsible leaders of all backgrounds to step forward and clearly denounce anti-Semitism, bigotry and hate whenever it occurs.”
Acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker said Tuesday that the rise in hate crimes is a call to action. “The Department of Justice’s top priority is to reduce violent crime in America, and hate crimes are violent crimes,” he said in a statement.
Colorado law enforcement received 106 reports of hate crimes in 2017, up just two reports from 2016 and down one from 2015, according to the data released Tuesday. More than half those crimes were motivated by racism and about a quarter were motivated by bias against a specific re- ligion.
Tally hard to pinpoint
But tallying hate crimes is notoriously difficult, and the federal numbers don’t include the wide swath of hate and bias incidents that don’t rise to the level of criminal activity or are never reported to police, advocacy organizations said.
“It sounds harsh to say this, but to a certain extent the changes don’t matter because we don’t know if those numbers are accurate,” said Cynthia Deitle, programs and operations director at the Denverbased Matthew Shepard Foundation and former civil rights unit chief with the FBI overseeing the agency’s hate crimes programs.
Agencies are not mandated to report their hate crime numbers to the FBI and there is not a standard method for collecting related data, Deitle said. What alarms Deitle most is that the vast majority of participating agencies report zero hate crimes. It’s difficult to believe that no crimes took place, especially in larger communities, she said.
About 178 city, county, college and state agencies in Colorado — including Fort Collins, Thornton, Lakewood and Westminster — reported that they did not investigate a single hate crime last year.
“If you live in a city like Fort Collins, that has a zero, what does that mean?” she said. “Is there really no hate ever?”
A collection of 16 Colorado advocacy organizations called The Mountain States Against Hate Coalition asked the state’s law enforcement agencies to report their statistics. The group includes the state’s American Civil Liberties Union, Immigrant Rights Coalition, Interfaith Alliance, The LGBT Community Center and the NAACP.
“Coalition partners call on state and federal officials to redouble efforts to track and disrupt escalating community tensions, including more comprehensive hate crime laws and better training of police,” the coalition said in a joint news release.
Denver police reported a total of 17 hate crimes in 2017: nine motivated by racism, two motivated by religious bias and six motivated by hatred of LGBTQ people. Colorado Springs, the city with the secondlargest population in the state, reported one hate crime, and Aurora, the third largest, reported 18.
More detailed data were not immediately Tuesday, and the FBI did not respond to a request for more indepth data.
Tracking hate crimes
But the FBI data is not the only source of information about hate activity in the state.
Other groups in Colorado, such as the AntiDefamation League, have noted an increase in the number of bias-motivated incidents in the state over the past year. The Anti-Defamation League’s database collects information on a much wider range of incidents that don’t necessarily have to be reported from law enforcement.
For example, while the FBI data counted about 974 hate crimes nationwide motivated by anti-Semitism in 2017, the Jewish organization counted 1,986 incidents that same year — a 60 percent uptick from 2016.
An annual list compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center found that 21 hate groups were active in Colorado in 2017, the highest number recorded in 18 years.
Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty has seen such a rise in reported hate crimes in his jurisdiction, especially against immigrants and LBGTQ people, that he created a hotline for people to report the incidents, which are often difficult to prosecute, he said in a recent interview with The Denver Post.
His office is also working with law enforcement agencies and prosecutors to improve the investigation of hate crimes. The reports can be difficult to investigate and prosecute because many investigators don’t know what evidence to collect or how to work with victims of hate crimes, many of whom are from marginalized and vulnerable groups.
Dougherty also plans to work within the community to help people become more comfortable reporting hate incidents to police.
The county’s hate crime hotline became active Sept. 10. The next morning, Dougherty went to check the phone.
“The red message light was already on,” he said.