Bias crimes range from verbal harassment to arson, violent assaults and even murder. The FBI's new report on hate crimes statistics was released the day after a budget agreement between Congress and the White House apparently scotched efforts to attach bias crime legislation to a federal spending bill. Juries also reached verdicts this week in two of the country's most notorious recent hate killings, the dragging death of a black man in Texas and the brutal killing of a gay college student in Wyoming. Provides regional breakdown Culled from data provided by some 10,000 law enforcement agencies in 46 states and the District of Columbia that have jurisdiction over 80 percent of the country's population, the FBI's report breaks down the raw figures into regions, types of offenses and general locations. The numbers represent the latest data available, but the statistics may not be wholly representative, the FBI warned, because not every participating law enforcement agency supplied information for the 12 months of the year.
Some states also do a better job of gathering statistics.
She said hate crimes are in decline in California overall, thanks to an aggressive effort to educate police about what makes a criminal act one of bias. California was the location of one of the country's most notorious recent hate crimes. White supremacist Buford Furrow has been charged with shooting and wounding several people at a Jewish community center in Los Angeles and killing a Filipino postal worker. Alan Stepakoff, whose son, Joshua, was wounded in the community center attack, said California's hate crime laws do not appear to be adequate. There is a need to make a clear statement against the tolerance of this kind of behavior and it needs to come from Washington.