EXCLUSIVE: Part 5: New portal dives into spread of hate in America
FBI’s just-launched ‘Hate Crime Explorer’ provides community-level stats
Share
Updated: 5:00 PM EDT Jul 27, 2021
FBI’s just-launched ‘Hate Crime Explorer’ provides community-level stats
Share
Updated: 5:00 PM EDT Jul 27, 2021
Hide Transcript
Show Transcript
So the public has never seen this before. That is correct. This is our first look. Yes. In order to confront hate, you first have to see it and there's no looking away from it when it's in black and white. Hate crime is our newest page that we are going to be launching this month right there. On the FBI's new hate crime Explorer page is a view of hate in communities across America anti black or african. American was the most reported, Most offenses were intimidation, followed by destruction, damage, vandalism by victim, by bias, by type and by place you can select massachusetts and actually navigate to individual agencies if there's a specific location that you're interested in, it's a sobering look at hateful crimes. Hard to view, difficult to look away. We don't want anyone to think that these crimes go unnoticed. Trudy Ford is letting in the light. This is the crime statistics management unit Ford oversees the national incident based reporting system, pronounced neighbors. A clearinghouse of crime data operated out of the hills of west Virginia. Her unit is a place few people get to see gathering data. Some might not want to see. Some agencies told us you're making them look bad that if there's hate crimes that they're reporting, then perhaps people don't want to live in their communities. Our goal isn't to make anyone look bad. It's to show the national landscape of crime in the United States. But as the National Investigative Unit reported in May, only 14% of the more than 15,000 agencies that gave crime stance to Ford section Actually reported hate offenses and 3200 agencies nationwide did not answer at all. We don't want things to go under reported. The only way we can show the national picture is to get all the information available to us. So this is a problem you're addressing we are working at it hard To find out why more agencies aren't reporting. We sent a survey to more than 14,000 police chiefs and sheriffs nationwide and asked them some who responded blamed a lack of resources. Others told us the neighbors system is just too hard to use, extremely difficult to navigate with multiple opportunities to make coding mistakes. A chief in Georgia wrote need better training on definitions of hate crimes. A texas chief said one in Illinois, wrote poorly designed and is not user friendly. I guess it's cumbersome. Brandon, Greif is the chief of police in marple township pennsylvania, a suburb of philadelphia. It's still very onerous I think for the writing officer it sounds like some people don't think it's very easy to use. We're always open to making it better. But I think it is new. This is the first year that we have mandated the use of neighbors to report to the FBI. I printed out the user manual and it's 165 pages. Could that be easier to use? And certainly always evolving. You want it to be though, as easy as it can be to encourage reporting. Do not. That is correct. We do. And so if some agencies say it's too hard, that may be something you want to look at. Absolute. These 20 states do not require hate crimes data collection, according to the Department of Justice. These 27 states have pending legislation to strengthen hate crime reporting investigation or prosecution in the past four years. Some form of hate crime legislation has passed in 10 states and failed in 27 informing future laws is one of truly ford's goals for the new hate crime Explorer page, showing as much of the hate as possible. So as to one day, hopefully make it disappear from our homeland as the FBI. We're really trying to make a concerted effort to get out there in the community to talk about this, to encourage reporting. You know, it doesn't help anybody if we don't know in Clarksburg west Virginia. I'm chief national investigative correspondent Mark Albert.