The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/hate-crimes/)
Black nationalist groups expanded to 233 chapters in 2017, from 193 the previous year, reports the Southern Poverty Law Center. Even with the growth, black nationalist groups lagged far behind the more than 600 hate groups that adhere to some form of white supremacist ideology, and they have virtually no supporters or influence in mainstream politics.
A lawsuit testing First Amendment issues contends that the alt-right movement is responsible for injuries and a death at the Virginia rally. Defendants say the case is aimed at silencing them and destroying them financially.
The Southern Poverty Law Center says Elliot Rodger, who killed six students in 2014, was the first of a series of 13 “alt-right killers” who have murdered 43 and injured 60 in the last four years. The perpetrators were all men, mostly under 30.
The state joins California in banning the use of a rare criminal defense that uses a victim’s sexual orientation as justification for a violent crime. Similar legislative measures will be introduced in other states in 2018.
After a year of attempting to quantify hate crimes in America, ProPublica says it has found a muddled and haphazard system for reporting the crimes that desperately needs a data makeover.
A deeply flawed system for collecting hate crime data has left the U.S. with unreliable, incomplete official counts and little handle on the true scope of bias-motivated violence. Law enforcement agenciesr reported 6,121 cases to the FBI last year but the National Crime Victimization Survey estimated that there were 250,000.
James Gonzalo Medina, 41, pleaded guilty to a charge of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction against the Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center in South Florida. A federal judge ordered him to undergo mental treatment while serving his sentence.
The federal agency’s tally of reported hate crimes reached a five-year high in 2016, with a significant bump in the last quarter of the year as Trump was unexpectedly swept into the White House.
While difficult to quantify as a trend, many educators note a spike in overtly racist actions by students, fueled by a polarizing presidential administration, divided public and a “meme culture.”
More than 20 transgender people have been killed in the U.S. in the last three years, but hate crime laws almost never are invoked. Missouri authorities won’t use a hate crime law in the case this week of a transgender teen who was stabbed in the genitals and had her eyes gouged out.