Earlier this week, the bureau released the Hate Crime Statistics, 2019, from the Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR). The data, which was submitted by 15,588 law enforcement agencies, shows that 16.7% of victims were attacked because of their sexual orientation, the third largest category after race and religion.
Victims who were targeted because of their gender identity made up 2.7%, a half-percentage point increase from 2018. Tracking and reporting hate crimes isn’t required by state and local law enforcement agencies, so these figures are likely to be much higher.
The total number of agencies tracking these statistic also fell by 451 last year, with 71 cities boasting populations over 100,000 reporting zero hate crimes – statistically,