By Adeel Hassan
Reporter, National Desk
New York Times
Personal attacks motivated by bias or prejudice reached a 16-year high in 2018, the F.B.I. said Tuesday, with a significant upswing in violence against Latinos outpacing a drop in assaults targeting Muslims and Arab-Americans.
Over all, the number of hate crimes of all kinds reported in the United States remained fairly flat last year after a three-year increase, according to an annual F.B.I. report. But while crimes against property were down, physical assaults against people were up, accounting for 61 percent of the 7,120 incidents classified as hate crimes by law enforcement officials nationwide.
State and local police forces are not required to report hate crimes to the F.B.I., but the bureau has made a significant effort in recent years to increase awareness and response rates. Still, many cities and some entire states failed to collect or report the data last year, limiting the conclusions that can be drawn from the F.B.I. report.
In addition, experts say that more than half of all victims of hate crimes never file a complaint with the authorities in the first place.
Even so, the F.B.I. said there were 4,571 reported hate crimes against people in 2018, many of them in America’s largest cities, involving victims from a wide range of ethnic and religious backgrounds.
“The trends show more violence, more interpersonal violence, and I think that’s probably reliable,” said James Nolan, a former F.B.I. crime analyst who helped oversee the National Hate Crime Data Collection Program from 1995-2000.
The F.B.I. defines a hate crime as a “criminal offense against a person or property, motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.” Victims of hate crimes can include institutions, religious organizations and government entities as well as individuals.
Here are the biggest takeaways from the report.