Seattle sees 346 percent increase in reported hate crimes since 2012
May 9, 2019, 6:30 PM
(Alex Edelman/Getty Images)
(Alex Edelman/Getty Images)
A recent report released by the Seattle Office of City Auditor noted a 346 percent increase in crimes “motivated by bias” since 2012.
RELATED: Hate crimes dramatically on the rise in Washington state
RELATED: White supremacist activity spurs pushback in Tacoma
The report details 215 total reported “crimes with bias elements” in 2018, along with 125 falling under the label of “malicious harassment.” An additional 181 fell under the “non-criminal bias incidents” category.
Hate crimes with a racial element were by far the most common subset, with a 427 percent increase since 2012. The largest increase of any crime, though, was for “assaults with a hate element,” up 524 percent over that same period.
The report also noted that a rise in reported hate crimes doesn’t necessarily indicate that more of them are occurring, pointing out that “high reporting can indicate law enforcement is prioritizing these crimes.”
This all runs in line with data from the FBI’s national crime statistics last year, that noted a 32 percent increase in hate crimes in Washington state between 2016 and 2017.
“This uptick, one of the largest upticks in the history of hate crime reporting, gives us and other civil rights organizations grave concern,” George Salim with the Anti-Defamation League told KIRO 7 when those numbers were released last November.
Hate crimes have been reportedly on the rise in Western Washington for years now.
An assault on Burien’s mayor was investigated as such a crime. In March of 2017, the Temple De Hirsch Sinai in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood was tagged with Nazi symbols and rhetoric amid a string of bomb threats, fires, and other incidents against religious congregations. Senior Rabbi Daniel Weiner told KIRO Radio at the time that he’s seen a handful of such incidents in the past, but he noted that there had been a change over the last couple of years.
“I think there is a tone that has been set in our nation that empowers those who previously were quietly shamed into the margins, and now they feel newly empowered, and feel they have new license to express these toxic views – perhaps out of ethnic pride, but certainly out of a desire to bully the most vulnerable in our society,” Weiner said.
