Hate crimes much higher than FBI report indicates

Hate crimes against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people in Minnesota are much higher than indicated in a newly-released FBI report. According to the report issued October 27^th, there were 27 total number of anti-GLBT hate crimes incidents reported across the state in 2007. However, the reports coming into the OutFront Minnesota Anti-Violence program were much higher than that – 161 hate crimes incidents in 2007.

 

“Often members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community don’t feel free to report their victimization to the police,” says OutFront Minnesota Anti-Violence Program Manager Rebecca Waggoner Kloek. “They may live in a smaller community and fear outing themselves; they fear police won’t be very sensitive to their experience; or they’re just plain isolated.

 

“The good news is that over the last ten years, police have become much more responsive to our community with regard to hate crimes and a larger number of GLBT people who have gone forward to the police have reported either neutral or positive experiences, as opposed to negative experiences.”

 

The situation in Minnesota right now is that hate crimes are still a problem, there’s much more work to be done not only to address them but to prevent them from happening in the first place, through multi-layered education and community building. “The other piece of good news,” says Waggoner Kloek, “is that Minnesota has hate crimes protections on the books, so we’ve got a strong enforcement tool.”