Hate crimes are rising across the nation. Is Whatcom County seeing the same trend?
Hate crimes rose nationwide and across Washington state, but attacks motivated by race, religion, sexual orientation or other bias remained about the same over the past year in Bellingham and Whatcom County, according to a new FBI report.
Hate crimes across Washington state increased 7%, from 506 reported bias incidents in 2018 to 542 in 2019, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s annual “Hate Crime Statistics 2019,” which uses data from law-enforcement agencies across the U.S.
Washington state ranked third in the nation for reported hate crimes in 2019, behind New Jersey and leader California, which reported 1,015.
“These are not simply numbers. These are members of our community who have been directly targeted by hate,” said Kendall Kosai, associate regional director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Seattle office.
“These numbers are a shocking reminder that hate pervades our community today at an unprecedented rate,” Kosai said in a statement.
Black and Jewish people were the largest individual groups targeted for a range of attacks, according to the report — from murder, rape and assault to intimidation and arson.
Despite the rising numbers, many hate crimes go unreported, according to a 2019 study by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative journalism project.
In Washington, data included reports from 77 of the state’s 253 participating law-enforcement agencies:
▪ Bellingham Police reported six hate crimes to the FBI in 2019, with five incidents motivated by the victim’s race or ethnicity and one motivated by the victim’s sexual orientation.
Bellingham Police reported six hate crimes in 2018, including four that focused on the victim’s religion, one on race or ethnicity and one on sexual orientation.
Just last month, vandals attacked several Bellingham business with stickers that bore a swastika and the legend “We are everywhere.”
In addition, the white nationalist organization Patriot Front repeatedly has vandalized Whatcom County cities with its racist materials since summer 2019, according to The Bellingham Herald reporting.
▪ Whatcom County reported two bias incidents in 2019 — one classified as a racial attack and another that targeted the victim’s religion.
Whatcom County reported four bias incidents in 2018, all concerning race or ethnicity.
▪ Western Washington University reported two incidents in 2019, with victims targeted by race, religion and disability.
WWU reported three hate crimes in 2018, all focused on religion — including a pair of vandalism incidents of Jewish materials at the university library.
▪ Blaine reported a single incident incident in 2019, linked to the victim’s sexual orientation, according to the FBI report.
Further details of the incidents weren’t immediately available from local law-enforcement agencies.
Whatcom County Executive Satpal Sidhu, who was born in India and practices the Sikh faith, was targeted by vandals who defaced his campaign signs with bullet holes and a racial slur in 2019.
Some 7,314 hate crimes were reported to the FBI in 2019, up from 7,120 the year before.
All U.S. states except Alabama reported data in 2019.
Hate crimes were at their highest level since 2008, The Associated Press reported.
There were 51 murders classified as hate crimes in 2019, including the 22 people slain in a mass shooting that targeted Latinos at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, the AP said.
Attacks against Black people continue to be the largest category of crimes by race or ethnicity, although such crimes dropped slightly last year to 1,930 from 1,943 in 2018.
Anti-Hispanic hate crimes rose to 527 in 2019 from 485 in 2018.
Hate crimes by religion rose 7% overall, but crimes targeting Jews and Jewish institutions rose 14% from 835 in 2018 to 953 in 2019.
Crimes against Sikhs dropped nationwide from 60 in 2018 to 49 in 2019.
Attacks on people based on sexual orientation stayed even — from 1,196 in 2018 to 1,195 in 2019.
Those that focused on gay men were the most common type of incident reported, with 746 in 2019, up from 726 in 2018.
Critics including the ADL have long warned that the data may be incomplete, in part because it is based on voluntary reporting by police agencies across the country, the AP reported.
Last year, only 2,172 law enforcement agencies out of about 15,000 participating agencies across the country reported hate crime data to the FBI, the bureau said.
And while the number of agencies reporting hate crimes increased, the number of agencies participating in the program actually dropped from the year before.
A large number of police agencies appeared not to submit any hate crime data, which has been a consistent struggle for Justice Department officials.
This story was originally published November 16, 2020 at 12:09 PM.
