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Along with the anti-Arab Bias Code 31, codes were also added to document anti-Mormon, anti-Jehovah's Witness, anti-Eastern Orthodox, anti-Other Christian, Anti-Buddhist, anti-Hindu and anti-Sikh crimes.īut even with the reintroduction of the anti-Arab hate crime category, many believe there continues to be a severe underreporting of incidents.

The incident prompted several organizations to push for a broadening of bias motivation categories in the UCR system. In 2012, a white supremacist opened fire at a Sikh gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisc., killing six people. 'If it's not part of the law enforcement training that they're receiving they may not be able to correctly identify a potential hate crime.' Some argue there is still a severe underreporting of anti-Arab hate crimes.īias Code 31 was finally introduced back into the national reports in 2015, following a horrific attack at a Sikh house of worship.

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'It also impacts the training that local law enforcement is going to receive about how to engage in local communities,' she said. Berry said it also carried troubling implications for whether law enforcement was sensitized to anti-Arab bias. The omission of the category meant that even during periods when it was known that anti-Arab sentiment was high, such as during the period after the 9/11 attacks, there was no measurement of the scale of the backlash. 'So we were literally rendered invisible in the hate crime data for decades,' said Berry. 'And it creates a very real challenge in the problem of getting accurate data about us that way.'Īccording to an analysis by the AAI, several states continued to collect data tracking anti-Arab hate crimes under the original UCR code known as 'Bias Code 31.' But when they submitted it to the federal database, these were converted to a catch-all category for 'Anti-Other Ethnicity/National Origin' bias incidents. 'The Anti-Arab category is, frankly, a newer one,' said Maya Berry, executive director of the AAI. NPR reached out to the FBI, but did not receive a response. It remained missing until it was reintroduced in the 2015 report. But, according to the Arab American Institute (AAI), the FBI quietly removed that code from the data collection program in 1992. When the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program developed its hate crime data collection guidelines pursuant to the Hate Crimes Statistics Act of 1990, it included a category to record anti-Arab incidents. When it comes to tracking data, the Arab American story is uniquely complicated.įor nearly two decades, anti-Arab violence was omitted from hate crime data. In a statement, his parents said their son is 'still shaken from this horrific attack' and worried about his friends, Hisham Awartani and Tahseen Ali Ahmad, who remain hospitalized. One of the victims, Kinnan Abdelhamid, was released from the hospital on Monday. Nonetheless, the men's families are pushing to have the attack prosecuted as a hate crime. 'Although we do not yet have evidence to support a hate crime enhancement, I do want to be clear that there is no question that this was a hateful act,' said Chittenden County State's Attorney Sarah George during a press conference on Monday.

Those 'statements or remarks' can be important evidence when determining whether or not the case is categorized as a hate crime.

The suspect, a 48-year-old man, has pleaded not guilty to three felony accounts of attempted murder. But the Burlington Police Department says that so far, it does not have any 'statements or remarks by the suspect' that might suggest a motive for the attack. What happened in Burlington, Vt.Īccording to police, the men were speaking a mix of Arabic and English and two of them were wearing Palestinian keffiyah scarves when they were accosted on a residential street in Burlington. Still, the shooting surfaces long-standing issues in tracking possible hate crimes committed against Arab Americans.Īnd the question of whether this attack will ultimately be prosecuted as a hate crime is set against an unique and complex history when it comes to tracking anti-Arab violence in the U.S. The families of three college students of Palestinian descent who were shot over the weekend in Vermont are calling it a crime ' fueled by hate.' So far, police in Burlington say they don't have information to suggest what the motive for the attack was. The suspect is accused of shooting three young men of Palestinian descent who were attending a Thanksgiving holiday gathering near the University of Vermont campus. In a still frame from video law enforcement officers investigate the scene of a shooting late last month in Burlington, Vt.

Troubling statistics on american finances