The FBI won’t be releasing their hate crime statistics for 2015 until November. But in the the meantime the New York Times obtained an advanced copy of a new study conducted by researchers at California State University, San Bernardino that found hate crimes against Muslims and transgender people rose dramatically last year.
The report, based on police reports from 20 states, found that an estimated 260 hate crimes against American Muslims were reported last year, representing a 78 percent increase since 2014, and the highest rate of incidents since 2001. Researchers told the Times, in an article about study’s findings published Saturday, that these numbers are almost certainly low due to under-reporting and misclassification of hate crimes.
Buried in literally the 14th paragraph of the article is that the report’s finding that hate crimes against all other groups barely fluctuated, except for one—those against transgender people rose by about 40 percent. It’s previously been reported by the Human Rights Campaign that 2015 was the deadliest year on record for gender-nonconforming people, and that trans women of color are “exponentially” more likely to experience violence, harassment, and discrimination.
According to Brian Levin, who authored the paper, the frequency of anti-Muslim crimes increased immediately after what the Times called, “some of Mr Trump’s most incendiary comments,” which I’m thinking is a quaint rephrasing of Trump’s call for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” in December.
Recent attacks that have been classified as hate crimes against Muslims include an execution-style shooting of an imam and his assistant in Queens last month, a man arrested in February for allegedly aimed a gun at a Muslim family on the streets of St. Louis, and, just last week, two women wearing hijabs were threatened, physically and verbally, by a venomous Trump supporter.
The full report can be accessed here.