The state of Florida’s 2006 hate crimes report is out and I have good news and I have bad news.
The good news is hate crimes in Florida fell to their lowest levels since 1998. Residents reported 259 hate crimes to law enforcement last year; the average since the 1990 federal law began mandating hate crimes reporting is 277.
The bad news? While Broward County led the state with 50 incidents against people or property, Hillsborough and Pinellas counties came in a close second and third. Hillsborough County reported 41 hate crimes in 2006, the majority being crimes based on race; Pinellas County reported 22 incidents, almost half of them based on sexual orientation.
A further look at the numbers provides another alarming trend. While racially based crimes are the clear majority of hate crimes in Florida — over 55 percent — they have also decreased over the years (with a jump here and there). But the percentage of hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation has topped out this year at 20.1 percent of all hate crimes committed. And next year could be worse if the drive for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage gains traction.
In a January 2006 post, Jim Burroway, editor of the gay rights blog Box Turtle Bulletin, analyzed hate crimes reporting from 2004 in those states that had amendments to ban same-sex marriage on the ballots. He found that in those 13 states hate crimes rose 47 percent over the previous year. In some of the states, like Missouri and Michigan, incidents rose over 70 percent.
And those are just the crimes reported.
This article appears in Jan 2-8, 2008.