FBI Says Hate Crimes Were In 172 NJ Towns: One Was Point Beach

POINT PLEASANT – New FBI data shows that 172 New Jersey towns had hate crimes in 2018 that harmed communities from throughout the state. One of them was Point Pleasant Beach.

The date release comes as new, chilling information was released in what Gov. Phil Murphy called a deadly "hate crime" in Jersey City.

The FBI recently published its “Hate Crimes Statistics” report, showing that nearly every county in New Jersey had incidents of crimes that were fueled by hate toward race, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender and gender identity.

Read more: FBI Says Hate Crimes Were In 172 NJ Towns: Here's Where

The towns with highest number from 2018 data included communities with low overall crime rates such as Deal in Monmouth County, which had the second highest number per capita in the state, and Sea Girt, also in Monmouth, which was ninth.

In the FBI report, there was slight decrease in hate crimes nationally in 2018 compared with 2017. The FBI found that the reported number of hate crimes in the United States decreased slightly from 7,175 incidents in 2017 to 7,120 in 2018.

In New Jersey, however, the agencies reported 571 hate crimes to the FBI, an increase of 76 incidents, or 15 percent, from the number of documented hate crimes in 2017.

Whether fewer hate crimes were reported to police in 2018 than 2017 is difficult to ascertain because 110 fewer law enforcement agencies nationally participated in the program overall compared with the previous year.

In 2018, 16,039 agencies participated in the report; however, only 2,026 submitted incident reports about hate crimes. The remaining agencies reported no hate crimes to the FBI.

Here were the hate crime numbers in Point Pleasant Beach (which had 1 over in 2018) and area communities per 10,000 people:

• #41 Point Pleasant Beach 2.24

According to the FBI, a majority of the victims nationally (59.6 percent) were targeted because of a bias toward race, ethnicity or ancestry. The second most common reason a victim was targeted was because of religion (18.7 percent), followed by sexual orientation (15.8 percent), gender identity (2.2 percent), disability (2.1 percent) and gender (0.7 percent), according to the statistics.

The FBI says 53.6 percent of the known offenders were white, 24 percent were black or African American, and other races accounted for the remaining known offenders. The percentages for white and black or African American known offenders both increased by about 3 percent from 2017. According to the FBI, a “known offender” does not imply that a suspect’s identity is known but that “some aspect of the suspect was identified.”

“Before a community addresses hate- and bias-motivated crimes, all stakeholders need to understand the local problem,” the U.S. Department of Justice advises. “The best assessment method is the SARA model: scanning for the problems, analyzing the facts, responding to reduce the problems, and assessing the outcome of the response.”

The Department of Justice also provides a list of tips to help ensure local law enforcement is partnered with the community in a joint mission to stop hate crimes from happening.

• Network with others in the community and ask who they recommend including in the partnership.
• Research and understand how involved your local law enforcement agency is with community policing, and identify a liaison officer at your local law enforcement agency who might serve as a point of contact.
• Reach out to the chief of police or sheriff, as well as any other key personnel you would like to participate in the partnership.
• Focus on solutions rather than problems when meeting with your local chief or police or sheriff.

Hate crimes are currently the highest investigative priority of the FBI’s civil rights program, according to the agency.