Drop in hate crimes positive step for U.S.
Lewis DiuguidHate crimes dropped in America in 2011, according to the FBI.
That a positive step for the country in people’s ability to get along. More than 6,216 hate crimes were reported to U.S. law enforcement agencies last year.
That’s a drop of 6 percent from 2010. Reason.com reports it’s the lowest since 1994.
Reason.com said 46.9 percent were motivated by a racial bias; 20.8 percent, sexual‑orientation bias; 19.8 percent, a religious bias; and 11.6 percent, an ethnicity/national origin bias. “Bias against a disability accounted for 0.9 percent of single-bias incidents,” Reason.com said.
Hate crimes against Muslims were up 12.5 percent. That’s an area of bias in this country that needs a lot of work.
Ray Parker
Overland Park
5 months, 1 week agoMore hate crimes are committed against Jews than any other group. We need to address that before acting to protect the Muslims who want to kill Americans, Christians, and Jews, and especially New Yorkers, in large numbers.
Phil Cardarella
5 months, 1 week agoHate is bad, but…
I have always been uneasy about the whole “hate crimes” concept. It comes perilously close to the concept of a “thought crime” by making the opinions of the defendant the basis for a special crime or type of crime.
Judges are free to take into account at sentencing the motives of a defendant in determining a sentence. Allowing or requiring a harsher sentence (sometimes even making a misdemeanor into a felony) because of the bigoted opinions of the defendant should make any libertarian uneasy.
Yanwen Xia
Overland Park
5 months, 1 week agoSadly to say, hate crime is still around as in a recent case of Mallory Owens, a 23-year-old from Mobile, Alabama, who was nearly beaten to death at the hand of her girlfriend’s 18-year-old brother.
We still have a long way to go before we can accept each other as what we are.