Hate crimes up nearly 8%, FBI report shows

The events that took place in Jena, La., were not included in the report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — An FBI report that shows a nearly 8 percent rise in hate crime incidents last year is providing new ammunition for civil rights groups advocating a tougher law enforcement response and new federal legislation to expand protections.

This year, civil rights advocates have increasingly taken to the streets to protest what they call official indifference to intimidation and attacks against blacks and other minorities. Others are pressing Congress to expand the groups protected by the federal hate crime statute.

Police across the nation reported 7,722 criminal incidents in 2006 targeting victims or property as a result of bias against a race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnic or national origin or physical or mental disability, the FBI said Monday. That was up 7.8 percent from 7,163 incidents reported in 2005. As usual, more than half the incidents were motivated by racial prejudice.

Although the noose incidents and beatings among students at Jena, La., high school occurred in the last half of 2006, they were not included in the report. Only 12,600 of the nation’s more than 17,000 local, county, state and federal police agencies participated in the hate crime reporting program in 2006 and neither Jena nor LaSalle Parish, in which the town is located, were among the agencies reporting.

Nevertheless, the Jena incidents, and a subsequent rash of noose and other racial incidents around the country, have spawned civil rights demonstrations that culminated last week at Justice Department headquarters here. The department said it investigated the Jena incident but decided not to prosecute because the federal government does not typically bring hate crime charges against juveniles.

Organizers said 100 busloads of protesters joined Friday’s march here. In September, an estimated 20,000 protesters marched through Jena. On Nov. 3, hundreds of protesters marched through downtown Charleston, W. Va., to urge prosecutors to add hate crime charges against six white people charged in the beating, torture and sexual assault of a 20-year-old black woman who was discovered Sept. 8 after several days of alleged captivity in a rural trailer.

The Jena case began in August 2006 after a black student sat under a tree known as a gathering spot for white students. Three white students later hung nooses from the tree. They were suspended by the school but not prosecuted. Six black teenagers, however, were charged by LaSalle Parish prosecutor Reed Walters with attempted second-degree murder of a white student who was beaten unconscious in December 2006. The charges have since been reduced to aggravated second-degree assault, but civil rights protesters have complained that no charges were filed against the white students who hung the nooses.

“The FBI report confirms what we have been saying for many months about the severe increase in hate crimes,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, who organized Friday’s march. “What is not reported, however, is the lack of prosecution and serious investigation by the Justice Department to counter this increase in hate crimes.” Sharpton called for Attorney General Michael Mukasey to meet with members of the Congressional Black Caucus and civil rights leaders to discuss hate crime enforcement.

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse noted that Mukasey praised the civil rights movement during his confirmation hearings and plans over the next few months to meet “with a number of groups and individuals who have an interest in or concerns about the work” of the department. Roehrkasse also noted that federal prosecutors convicted a record 189 defendants of civil rights violations in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.

The Justice Department says it is actively investigating a number of noose incidents at schools, workplaces and neighborhoods around the country. It says “a noose is a powerful symbol of hate and racially motivated violence” recalling the days of lynchings of blacks and that it can constitute a federal civil rights offense under some circumstances.

Since the FBI began collecting hate crime data in 1991, the most frequent motivation has been racial bias, accounting for 51.8 percent of incidents in 2006, down from 54.7 percent in 2005.