Racial prejudice, most often directed at black people, was behind more than half the nation's 7,400 reported hate crime incidents in 2003, the FBI said yesterday.
Reports of hate crimes motivated by anti-black bias totaled 2,548 in 2003, almost double the total hate crimes against all other racial groups. There were 3,150 black victims in those incidents, including four who were murdered, according to the annual FBI figures.
The overall total of 7,489 hate crime incidents reported in 2003 was slightly more than the 7,462 reported in 2002, the lowest number since 1994. Race bias was behind 3,844 of the 2003 cases.
Intimidation, vandalism and property destruction account for nearly two-thirds of the nation's hate crimes. Although the FBI report does not provide details, a database maintained by the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., shows that such incidents range from spray-painting of swastikas and racial slurs on property to menacing with guns and verbal threats.
There were also hundreds of violent hate crimes in 2003, including 14 murders. There were more than 2,700 assaults, 444 robberies, burglaries and thefts related to prejudice, and 34 arson incidents.
Heidi Beirich, spokeswoman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said the FBI's hate crime totals are probably low because reporting by local law enforcement agencies is voluntary, and some states have weak hate crime laws. Some states, for example, do not recognize bias against sexual orientation as the basis for a hate crime.
"We have found several flaws. We think there's really more like 50,000 hate crimes out there each year," Beirich said.
The FBI report shows that crimes categorized as anti-Islamic remained at about the same level in 2003 -- 149 crimes -- as the year before. There was a spike in such crimes immediately after the 2001 terror attacks, which helped drive the overall hate crime number to 9,730 that year.
By far the largest number of hate crime reports based on religion involved Jews, with 927 incidents in 2003, about the same as in 2002.
The report also found more than 1,200 hate crimes based on sexual orientation, including 783 against gay men. That included six murders.
Of all known offenders, 62 percent were white and 18 percent were black. About a third of all hate crimes occurred at people's homes, with 17 percent taking place on highways or streets and almost 12 percent at colleges, universities and other educational institutions.
The FBI hate crimes report is drawn from information submitted by more than 11,900 law enforcement agencies across the country. Only about 16 percent of those agencies reported any hate crimes in their jurisdictions during 2003.
