Hate Crimes In Illinois: FBI Report Shows Decrease

ILLINOIS — The FBI documented a sharp increase in hate crimes in 2017 compared to 2016, including a 37 percent spike in anti-Jewish offenses and a 23 percent increase in overall religious-based crimes. But here in Illinois, the number of hate crimes reported by police departments bucked the national trend, decreasing in 2017.

Whether more hate crimes were reported to police in 2017 than in 2016 is difficult to ascertain because there were an additional 1,000 law enforcement agencies that participated in the program compared to the previous year. Such stark increases, though, indicate more and more people and institutions are being targeted because of religion. According to the Anti Defamation League, the 1,564 religion-based hate crimes reported in 2017 are the second-highest ever. The highest number of such crimes were reported in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, according to the ADL.

Part of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program, the agency’s Hate Crime Statistics report is released annually. In 2017, law enforcement agencies reported 7,175 hate crimes to the FBI. While 16,149 agencies participated in 2017, only 2,040 submitted incident reports about hate crimes. The remaining agencies reported 0 hate crimes to the FBI. In 2016, the FBI documented 6,121 hate crimes.

“Two weeks ago, we witnessed the most deadly anti-Semitic hate crime in American history. Today, we have another FBI study showing a big jump in hate crimes against Americans because of their race, religion, ethnicity, and sexual orientation,” Jonathan A. Greenblatt, ADL CEO and National Director, said in a statement. “This report provides further evidence that more must be done to address the divisive climate of hate in America. That begins with leaders from all walks of life and from all sectors of society forcefully condemning anti-Semitism, bigotry, and hate whenever it occurs.”

In Illinois, 741 law enforcement agencies provided information to the FBI but only 32 agencies actually reported hate crimes. Collectively, then 32 agencies reported 82 hate crimes to the FBI, a decrease from the 111 documented hate crimes in 2016.

• Man Charged With Hate Crime, Islamophobic Graffiti
• Church Vandal Charged With Hate Crimes: Police
• Man Charged With Hate Crime After Punching Bar Patron
• Skokie Man Pleads Guilty To Hate Crime, Gets Probation
• Hate Crime Charge After Man Draws Swastika
• Biden Talks Synagogue Shooting, Hate Crimes At IL Rally

Chicago reported 50 percent of the hate crimes documented by the FBI in Illinois, with a total of 41 reports in 2017.

The FBI data says race or ethnicity was the motivation behind 39 of Illinois' hate crimes in 2017. Twenty-seven were based on religion, 14 on sexual orientation, 1 on disability and 1 on gender identity.

According to the FBI, a majority of the victims (59.6 percent) were targeted because of a bias towards race, ethnicity or ancestry. The second most common reason a victim was targeted was because of religion (20.6 percent) followed by sexual-orientation (15.8 percent), disability (1.9 percent), gender identity (1.6 percent) and gender (0.6 percent), according to the statistics.

The FBI says 50.7 percent of known offenders were white, 21.3 percent were African-American and other races accounted for the remaining known offenders. According to the FBI, a “known offender” does not imply that a suspect’s identity is known but that “some aspect of the suspect was identified.”

In 2016, 738 Illinois law enforcement agencies participated in the program and 42 reported incidents of hate crimes. In all, the FBI documented 111 hate crimes in Illinois in 2016.

Experts say the annual hate crime statistics report provides an incomplete picture of the number of hate crimes in the country. The ADL noted that in the 2017 report, 91 cities that had a population of 100,000 or more either did not report any data to the FBI or reported 0 instances of hate crimes.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Photo via Shutterstock