The Federal Bureau of Investigation released its annual hate-crimes report last week, finding that the number of bias crimes in the nation dropped last year, with Pennsylvania reporting the same trend.
The 2009 Uniform Crime Report compiled data on hate crimes from more than 14,000 law-enforcement agencies nationwide, covering about 91 percent of the nation’s population.
For the fifth year in a row, the FBI reported that Pennsylvania saw a drop in the number of reported hate crimes and last year recorded just five such incidents motivated by sexual orientation.
National statistics
Nationwide, there were 6,604 bias-motivated incidents in 2009, a decrease from 7,783 incidents the previous year.
Nearly one-half of the incidents were motivated by a victim’s race, while 18.5 percent — the second-highest group — stemmed from bias against a victim’s sexual orientation, followed by religion, ethnicity and disability.
Though current statistics don’t include them, the 2010 UCR will track hate crimes based on gender and gender identity, in accordance with the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act.
In 2008, the number of sexual orientation-related crimes increased from the previous year to 1,297, while last year there was a decrease to 1,223; however, the percentage of overall crimes related to sexual orientation increased from 16.6 percent to 18.5 percent.
The majority, 55.8 percent, of the crimes motivated by sexual orientation were labeled as anti-male homosexual, followed by anti-homosexual, anti-female homosexual and anti-bisexual. About 1.7 percent of the crimes were fueled by anti-heterosexual bias. There were 1,482 victims targeted by a sexual-orientation bias, with 1,394 offenders.
Of the 7,789 actual offenses committed during the crimes, more than half were categorized as crimes against persons, most of which were simple or aggravated assaults or intimidation.
There were 1,436 total offenses committed based on sexual orientation last year. About 34 percent of the offenses were classified as simple assaults, 22.6 percent as intimidation and 20.5 percent as destruction and vandalism. There was one murder and four rapes reported to have been motivated by the victims’ sexual orientation.
About 31 percent of crimes that targeted someone’s sexual orientation were committed at a residence or home, while other frequent locations included the street or alley or at a school or college.
Local statistics
Pennsylvania had 1,299 law-enforcement agencies participating throughout the state — the highest number of any state in the country, as Pennsylvania has the highest number of law-enforcement agencies in the nation. Of those agencies, just 22 reported that a hate crime occurred in their jurisdiction last year.
The agencies recorded a combined 46 hate-crime incidents, a drop from 68 incidents in 2008.
In Pennsylvania, there were five reported bias crimes motivated by sexual orientation, encompassing about 10.9 percent of all crimes, lower than the national average of LGBT-related crimes. Most of the state’s hate crimes, 58.7 percent, targeted a victim’s race, with 21.7 percent focused on religion and 8.7 percent on ethnicity.
State police in Bucks and Chester counties and the municipality of Harrisburg each reported one bias incident motivated by sexual orientation, while Pittsburgh had two such incidents. Philadelphia reported no hate crimes related to sexual orientation.
New Jersey had only 510 participating agencies, but 175 of them reported a hate crime occurred within their jurisdiction, with a total of 549 bias incidents. Sexual orientation was the third most frequent motivator, with 66 such incidents, accounting for 12 percent of all bias incidents in New Jersey.
Steve Glassman, chair of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, called the statistics “completely inaccurate” and said they reflect vast underreporting.
Glassman said there is sparse education for police and district attorneys on what constitutes a hate crime and, in Pennsylvania, the great majority of law-enforcement agencies have five or fewer employees, which he said could impact their ability to properly report the data.
“Police aren’t well-trained in this area, they’re overwhelmed with responsibilities and classifying something as a hate crime involves paperwork that they probably don’t want to get involved with,” Glassman said.
He noted that in 2004, the FBI reported that Pennsylvania had just one record of an LGBT-related hate crime, while the Center for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights (now Equality Pennsylvania) recorded more than 75 such incidents just in Philadelphia.
“There’s tremendous underreporting,” Glassman said. “These numbers are unrepresentative and inconsistent.”
Other new data
Although the FBI found a drop in the number of anti-LGBT hate crimes, a recent report from an agency that tracks activity by hate groups found more alarming statistics.
The Southern Poverty Law Center released its Intelligence Report the same week as the UCR release, noting in the report that the FBI stats are “notoriously sketchy.”
The SPLC analyzed 14 years of the FBI data, finding that about 17.4 percent of the nearly 90,000 hate-crimes offenses during that time were aimed at LGBTs, the second-largest group after Muslims, who accounted for 41 percent of the victims. The organization then related those numbers to the estimated prevalence of each demographic group in the American population, using the commonly accepted figure of 2.1 percent to account for LGBTs.
This methodology allowed the SPLC to determine that LGBs are victimized at 8.3 times the expected rate, the highest of all the demographic populations included. Compared to the other groups, said the SPLC, LGBs are more than twice as likely to be the victim of a hate crime as Jews or blacks, more than four times as likely as Muslims and 14 times more likely than Latinos.
Intelligence Report editor Mark Potok said the more visibility the gay community gains, the more virulent its opponents become.
“As Americans become more accepting of homosexuals, the most extreme elements of the antigay movement are digging in their heels and continuing to defame gays and lesbians with falsehoods that grow more incendiary by the days,” Potok said in a statement. “The leaders of this movement may deny it, but it seems clear that their demonization of homosexuals plays a role in fomenting the violence, hatred and bullying we’re seeing.”
Jen Colletta can be reached at [email protected].