What is a hate crime?
A hate crime is a traditional offense (like vandalism, arson, assault, or murder) with an added element of bias. Hate crimes are motivated by bias, prejudice, or personal hatred toward the actual or perceived characteristics of a victim, including race, color, national origin, religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender, or gender identity.
What is a hate incident?
A hate incident, which may or may not constitute a criminal offence, which is perceived by the victim or any other person as being motivated by prejudice or hate.
What should I do if I am targeted by hate?
Reach Out
If you are injured, fear for your safety, or the safety of others, seek emergency services. If you feel comfortable doing so, call 911.
Document
Preserve and photograph any physical evidence, for example do not remove graffiti, document it by taking pictures. Do not delete texts, emails, or social media posts – including your own.
Get Support
- Contact specialized community organizations in your area. View our resource map to help identify organizations in your area.
- For legal and social resources call 1-844-9-NO-HATE (1-844-966-4283).
- Emotional distress is a normal reaction to an abnormal situation that hate incidents create. If you need crisis support you may contact the Crisis Text Line by sending the text “HOME” to 741741. For more information about this resource, visit http://www.crisistextline.org/.
How do I report a hate crime or hate incident?
If you feel comfortable doing so, report the incident to law enforcement.
To obtain legal and social resources, you may report the incident to 1-844-9-NO-HATE (1-844-966-4283) or report online, here.
Concerns of Under Reporting
Hate crimes are under-reported. Studies from the Department of Justice have shown that nearly two-thirds of hate crimes go unreported to law enforcement. Paired with the fact that law enforcement agencies are not required to disclose their hate crime data to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the public record of hate crimes is notoriously low compared to the on the ground reality.
For advocates to most effectively combat hate crimes, it is important that there is an accurate public record. This initiative works to augment the public record of hate incidents and hate crimes to more accurately demonstrate the day-to-day realities of front-line impacted communities.
