SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The FBI released its annual hate crime report this week, but it’s missing data from some of the largest states like California, New York, and Florida.
So, while the FBI report shows hate crimes decreased in 2021, it is not true.
Only 65% of law enforcement agencies across the country provided data. That’s down from 90% the year before. It’s because the FBI transitioned to a new database.
The FBI recorded 7,300 hate crimes in 2021, without data from cities like Los Angeles and New York.
“We're already talking about another 2,200 to add on to the 7300, which would put us over 9000," Brian Levin said. "About actually 9,500 just if we put in New York City and California alone, which would make 2021 the second worst year since data has been collected since 1991.”
Brian Levin is the director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University San Bernadino.
“California was shown by the FBI to have only 73 hate crimes, and only 15 out of 740 agencies in California actually participated,” Levin said.
The 15 that did participate are concentrated in the San Diego area.
“It's so incomplete as to be inadvertently deceptive,” Levin said.
Levin’s center creates its own hate crime database from public information requests and information that state agencies have available online.
“Jewish people in America, the top two places where they live, New York City and Los Angeles, both aren't counted. The FBI said in the places that they were counting that there were 324 hate crimes. Just in LA and New York City, we had 287," Levin said.
He said anti-Asian hate crimes are significantly under reported too.
"A record for anti Asian up 224%," Levin said. "But you won't see it in the FBI data. Luckily, various cities and states of which we collect from do keep these data."
California law enforcement agencies do provide this data to the California Department of Justice, but the FBI switched over to a new database, and they will only accept data if it’s in the new format.
The California Department of Justice said, “To date, nearly 600 reporting agencies have completed the transition and are in the process of becoming certified by our office.”
The California DOJ said in the last few months, they’ve doubled the amount of agencies who have transitioned over and are in the process of being certified.
Levin said in the future, this database will actually be a good thing because it does break the data down in a better format, but he wants the FBI to go back and fix the report when they get all of the data.
WATCH RELATED: Hate crimes surged last year in San Diego, as well as overall crime (March 2022).