FBI Report: Hate Crimes Spike For Third Straight Year

The Voice Of America reports:

The number of hate crime incidents reported in the United States jumped by 17 percent last year to more than 7,000 – the largest increase since 2001 when the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, led to a surge in bias-motivated crimes.

The increase, reported Tuesday by the FBI, marks the third annual jump in hate crimes and includes a double-digit increase in anti-Arab and anti-Semitic incidents. The report comes two weeks after a white supremacist killed 11 people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, renewing a national debate over rising hate crime and calls for the Trump administration to do more to stem its tide.

The FBI, which collects hate crime data from law enforcement agencies around the country, defines 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.”