Utah Department of Public Safety reports 96 hate crimes in 2021

SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Bureau of Criminal Identification released its number of verified hate crimes in 2021. There were 96 total hate crimes.

June 2021 reported the highest amount of hate crimes with 31 incidents. Of those 31, 13 fit in a category within the LGBTQ community, 13 were a larceny or destruction/vandalism/damage of property.

The most common type of hate crime that occurred in 2021 was a destruction/damage/vandalism of property which represents 34 of 96 of the total incidents or 35%.

The second most common hate crime was simple assaults with 22 of 96 incidents. The top five categories with hate crime incidents in 2021 were:

• Anti-LGBTQ (33 crimes)
• Anti-Hispanic or Latino (13 crimes)
• Anti-Black or African American (9 crimes)
• Anti-Asian (7 crimes)
• Anti-Mormon (7 crimes)

A release from the Utah Department of Public Safety states, “Although we have seen an increase in hate crimes across the state, the biggest contributor to this increase is that all law enforcement agencies started uniformly reporting crime data through the FBI’s crime data reporting system, NIBRS, starting in January 2021. Once BCI receives the data from local agencies, a special team will verify each case to ensure the reporting is accurate. Through this verification process, we can confirm that Utah had 96 hate crimes across the state. ”

The definition of Hate Crime in the Uniform Crime Reporting Program is:
A criminal offense committed against a person or property which is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias against a race, religion, ethnic/national origin group, sexual orientation group, or disability.