We Don’t Need Anyone To Tell Us, We Know.

Hate crimes are skyrocketing!

Sadly we are probably going to set a record for trans murders this year. A trans women was murdered in Idaho this week.

HRC Mourns Jo Acker, 26-year-old Trans Woman Killed in Boise, Idaho
By Jose Soto
October 28, 2021


HRC is deeply saddened to learn of the death of Jo Acker, a white 26-year-old transgender woman killed in Boise, Idaho, on Oct. 26, 2021. Acker’s death is at least the 42nd violent killing of a transgender or gender non-conforming person in 2021. We say “at least” because too often these deaths go unreported — or misreported.

Her murder was not directed at because she was trans but rather…

Acker was one of the victims of a tragic shooting at Boise Towne Square mall, which also resulted in five people injured. She was working security at the mall at the time of the shooting, according to her friend Dominique Cairistiona. Her family said Acker ran toward the suspect to stop him, likely saving many lives. The other individual who was fatally injured in the shooting was 49-year-old Roberto Padilla Arguelles.
[...]
HRC recorded 44 deaths of transgender and gender non-conforming people in 2020, more than in any year since we began tracking this violence in 2013.

But across the country hate crimes are increasing at an alarming rate!

FBI Reports Hate Crimes at Highest Level in 12 Years
Equal Justice Initiative
September 9, 2021


The FBI reported last week that 15,136 law enforcement agencies submitted incident reports involving 7,759 criminal incidents motivated by bias toward race, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender, and gender identity in 2020.

That’s the highest number of reported hate crime incidents since 2008, when 7,783 incidents were reported, and it reflects an increase of about 450 incidents from 2019—even though fewer law enforcement agencies reported hate crime incidents to the FBI in 2020 than in previous years.

Hate crime incidents targeting people because of their race make up the largest category by far. Out of more than 10,800 people who reported that they were the victim of a hate crime last year, 61.9% were targeted because of their race, ethnicity, or ancestry, the FBI reports.

Bias against African Americans overwhelmingly comprised the largest category of race-based hate crime incidents, with a total of 56% of race-based hate crimes being motivated by anti-Black bias.

But Blacks are not along in being attacked, Asian Americans are also increasing.

Anti-Asian hate crimes rose 73% last year, updated FBI data says
Corrected FBI numbers show a disproportionate increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans.
NBC News
By Sakshi Venkatraman
October 28, 2021


Anti-Asian hate crimes increased more than 73 percent in 2020, according to newly corrected FBI data. It’s a disproportionate uptick compared to hate crimes in general, which rose 13 percent.

The FBI’s data, originally released in August, was reposted Monday morning after an error was found in Ohio’s reporting system. The misreported statistics have been corrected, according to a bureau press release, and the new data reflects the accurate count for the 15,138 law enforcement agencies that reported numbers.

An online breakdown confirmed what scholars, activists and community leaders have known for a long time — that anti-Asian incidents took a dramatic upswing during the pandemic. The FBI reported 279 hate crimes against Asians in 2020, compared to 161 in 2019.

What changed last year?

Last year we had COVID-19 but it wasn’t that, what I believe caused the increase it was Trump calling the virus the Asian Virus and stirred up hate against Asian American and telling the white supremacists rioters in Charlotte good people the green light for hate crimes.

AP News wrote,

The reports of hateful and violent posts on Facebook started pouring in on the night of May 28 last year, soon after then-President Donald Trump sent a warning on social media that looters in Minneapolis would be shot.

[…]

But it wasn’t until after Trump posted about Floyd’s death that the reports of violence and hate speech increased “rapidly” on Facebook across the country, an internal company analysis of the ex-president’s social media post reveals.

“These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd and I won’t let that happen,” Trump wrote at 9:53 a.m. on May 28 from his Twitter and Facebook accounts. “Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts the shooting starts!”

Hate crimes goes to motive and is very hard prove.

David LaBahn, president of the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, told NBC News in 2018 that proving underlying bias or hate is tricky. “You’ve got to drill down in the background of that individual,” he said.

“FBI hate crime data represents the tip of the iceberg and understates the magnitude of hate crime in America,” Sim J. Singh, national advocacy manager of The Sikh Coalition, told NBC News in 2017. “The only way to bridge the data gap is for law enforcement agencies to adopt mandatory hate crime reporting.”

But we need more than developing mandatory hate crime reporting we need training so that the criminal justice system can identify a crime of bias.

The NBC article goes on to say,

White people made up more than 55 percent of the offenders across the board, the FBI said, a contrast to what viral clips perpetuated in the wake of anti-Asian violence.

One of the things that we do know, hate crimes target people who are different.