Crying “Wolf” It Hurts Us All

There has been a couple of “fake” hate crimes reported lately and it hurts everyone.

Hate Crime Hoaxes Are Rare, but Can Be ‘Devastating’
New York Times
By Audra D. S. Burch
February 22, 2019

The Muslim college student was on the New York City subway when three men snatched her bag, reached for her hijab and called her a terrorist. A Houston sixth grader was kidnapped and robbed by a band of young white supremacists, one with an “I hate black people” tattoo on his arm. And on one of the coldest nights of the year in Chicago, Jussie Smollett, a black and gay actor, was attacked by two men who shouted “MAGA Country” and slipped a noose around his neck.

The three victims reported these horrific assaults to the police as hate crimes, all built on America’s race, religion and sexual identity fault lines. Except the police say the incidents never happened.
[…]
Despite the headlines that have dominated the news cycle since, fake hate crime reports are uncommon.

Hoaxes are not tracked formally, but the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, said that of an estimated 21,000 hate crime cases between 2016 and 2018, fewer than 50 reports were found to be false. The center believes that less than 1 percent of all reported hate crimes are false.

But such false reports can play an outsize role in undermining the credibility of real bias victims and anti-hate efforts. In the aftermath of Mr. Smollett’s arrest, one lawmaker has even promised to draft a bill increasing the penalty for filing false hate crime reports.

Just like Aesop's Fables about the “Boy Who Cried Wolf” from between 620 and 564 BCE it is true today. Crying wolf hurts us all, it causes our hater to see we told you it was “fake” and in today’s climate that resonates.

“These kinds of rare cases do damage, especially in the current hostile political environment,” said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “They are seized upon and used to try to discredit legitimate anti-Muslim incidents or used to say there is no such thing as a hate crime.”

Mr. Hooper said his group received 2,000 to 3,000 bias reports annually before verification, and “less than a handful” were deemed false each year.

What we have to do is condemn those who falsely report a hate crime because the conservatives will hold up that one out of a thousand as an example.

And it has already started…

Minnesota lawmaker seeks crackdown on fake hate crime claims
WNDU
By Associated Press
February 21, 2019

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - A Minnesota lawmaker wants tougher penalties for falsely reporting hate crimes in his state after an actor in Chicago was accused of doing so.

Rep. Nick Zerwas' bill comes after actor Jussie Smollett was charged with falsely telling authorities he was attacked by men who hurled racist and anti-gay slurs and looped a rope around his neck.
[…]
Filing a false police report is usually a misdemeanor in Minnesota. His bill would make falsely reporting hate crimes a gross misdemeanor punishable up to a year in jail and a $3,000 fine.

Whether or not this bill is a good idea or not is beside the point.

We have to in our strongest language to condone the falsely reporting a crime, we can’t be silent because the opposition will use our silence against us.