Hate crime incidents reported by Vermont law enforcement agencies continued to rise in 2018, reaching their highest number since the Federal Bureau of Investigation began collecting data in 1995.
Vermont law enforcement reported 45 incidents of hate crimes last year, up from 34 in 2017, and almost a six-fold increase since 2015, when there were only eight such incidents reported.
The most hate crime incidents reported in Vermont in a single year before the recent increase was 32 in 2005.
“What we are really seeing in 2018 is a troubling upward trend in reported hate crimes since 2015,” said Julio Thompson, director of the civil rights unit of the Vermont Attorney General’s Office.
In the 2018 report, released by the FBI, 30 of the 45 hate crime incidents in Vermont were attributed to the victim’s race. Eleven were based on religion, three on sexual orientation and one on disabilities.
However, Vermont’s hate crime rate could be much higher than it appears, as accurate reporting is notoriously difficult, with the majority of incidents going unreported by victims and by law enforcement agencies.
In a 2018 VPR-Vermont PBS poll, 40% of respondents said more should be done to address racist attitudes in the state.
However 13% responded that “too much” was being done to bring attention to racial issues while 16% said racism was not a problem in Vermont at all.
Those in law enforcement have argued that Vermont’s current spike in hate crimes is a result of clearer reporting criteria for police as well as a more active community that is willing to speak out about crimes committed because of racial bias.
But Thompson said the Attorney General’s Office does not believe better reporting standards are the reason hate crimes have been rising steadily since 2015.
“I don’t think that difference in law enforcement reporting in Vermont would account for this kind of jump alone,” Thompson said.
Thompson and Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, blame President Donald Trump and the political climate in Washington, D.C., for the increase in hate-motivated crimes nationwide.
“Unfortunately, I think it is somewhat enhanced by D.C. politics and by social media,” Sears said.
“We are taking steps to try to deal with it through more and more publicity and more and more speaking out,” he added.
Rep. Kevin Christie, D-White River Junction, a member of the House Judiciary Committee and one of the few people of color in Vermont’s Legislature, said he would call for a study of the state’s hate crime statutes.
Nationally, there were 7,120 reported hate crimes in 2018, a slight decrease compared to 2017, when there were a total of 7,175 hate crimes reported. This coincides with the number of hate groups rising to a record high – 1,020 – in 2018, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“Rather than trying to tamp down hate, as presidents of both parties have done, President Trump elevates it – with both his rhetoric and his policies,” said Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center, in a statement.
“He’s given people across America the go-ahead to act on their worst instincts,” she added.
The white nationalist group Patriot Front was the only hate organization active in Vermont in 2018, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate crimes across the country. The neo-Nazi group was founded in the wake of the violent 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and uses secret online chat forums to communicate.