Wed, 21 Nov 2007

SF Haters

Hrm, something seems a bit off here. I was checking posts on SFist.com and then saw this:

on Monday the FBI just awarded SF as the city with the largest reported number of hate crimes in 2006. According to Bay City News (via SF Crime):

With a population of approximately 746,000, had a total of 94 reported hate crime incidents in 2006, including 25 that were race-based, 20 religion-based, 38 based on sexual orientation and 11 based on ethnicity, according to the FBI's Hate Crime Statistics 2006 report.

The largest city in the Bay Area, San Jose, (much to our surprise) had a scant 29 reported hate crimes in 2006. And Oakland. Had two.

And the SF Chronicle reports that hate crimes dropped in '06:

In San Francisco, sexual orientation bias was a factor in more 38 of the 94 cases, the FBI said. Twenty-five victims were targeted because of their race, the FBI said, 20 because of religion and 11 because of their ethnicity.

Most Bay Area jurisdictions reported only one or two hate crimes in all of 2006, according to the FBI, though San Jose reported 29 incidents, up from 22 the year before. Oakland reported just two, compared with three in 2005.

That makes me wonder if SF is quick to categorize a crime as a hate crime. Is it a semantic argument, or something more substantial?

21 Nov 13:34 | /news | 3 comment(s)


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