Utah is seeing an uptick in hate crimes, with more reported last year as of October 2023 than all of the previous year, according to state data.
That trend extends to the rest of the U.S., according to agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who held a news conference at their Salt Lake City office Wednesday urging Utah’s underserved and underrepresented communities to report hate crimes.
“Since the events in the Middle East, there has been a disproportionate amount of hate speech directed at people in the Jewish community, people in the Arab-American community and people in the Muslim community,” said Shohini Sinha, special agent in charge of the Salt Lake City FBI office, which covers Utah, Idaho and Montana.
According to Department of Public Safety data, there were 181 reported hate crimes in Utah last year as of Oct. 31. That’s compared to 151 in all of 2022 and 103 in 2021.
The bulk of that increase comes from a surge in reported hate crimes against LGBTQ+ people; in 2023, 82 hate crimes against that community were recorded by the department, which is more than the prior four years combined.
FILE – The FBI seal is pictured in Omaha, Neb., Aug. 10, 2022 | Photo by Charlie Neibergall, The Associated Press, St. George News
Nationally, FBI hate crime data from 2023 is not yet available, but Sinha says she expects there to be an uptick. Data from 2022 show an increase of nearly 800 hate crimes from 2021, fueled mostly by race-based crimes, antisemitism and Islamophobia. Much like Utah, anti-gay and anti-lesbian hate crimes hit a five-year high nationally, and crimes against transgender people spiked by 40%.
“Anecdotally, I know myself and my colleagues across the nation believe there has been an uptick in hate crimes and hate speech and I believe the data will bear that out,” Sinha told Utah News Dispatch.
Most of those crimes, Sinha said, are in the form of property damage and threats, whether it’s via social media, phone or email. Face-to-face threats and violence are less prevalent but still a concern, she said.
Sinha told reporters there’s a correlation between high-profile news events and an increase in hate crimes against certain communities, using Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, and the Israeli army’s subsequent campaign in Gaza, as an example. Since the attack, the Anti-Defamation League reported a rise in targeted crimes against Jews, Muslims, Palestinians and Arab Americans.
“If you think back to 2020 or 2021 when we were dealing with the pandemic, there was an uptick in hate crimes against Asian-Americans and people of Asian ethnicity. So yes, that does tend to be a trend,” she said.
In Utah, anti-Jewish and anti-Islamic hate crimes remain relatively low. The Department of Public Safety recorded 22 incidents against Jews in the last six years and eight against Muslims. But that’s just what was reported to police, and the FBI on Wednesday said it was launching a new public awareness campaign to encourage communities to report targeted attacks.
“I’m sure there are many cases we just don’t know about,” Sinha said. “We recognize some might be hesitant to report these crimes for various reasons — literacy challenges, not knowing how to report a crime or a mistrust in law enforcement. We want people to know we take all complaints seriously and we will protect your privacy.”
The bureau will be releasing videos encouraging hate crime reporting translated into eight languages — Spanish, Arabic, Farsi, Turkish, Urdu, Dari, Pashtun and Somali — in an attempt to reach some of the groups Sinha said are disproportionately targeted.
If you believe you are a victim or a witness of a hate crime, you can call the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI or submit a tip at tips.fbi.gov.
Written by KYLE DUNPHEY, Utah News Dispatch.
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