The Federal Bureau of Investigation released its annual report on hate crimes across the nation this past week, documenting 1,239 incidents in which the perpetrators’ motivating factor was victims’ actual or perceived sexual orientation. These incidents represented 17 percent of all hate crimes documented in the FBI’s report. This data did not correlate with the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs’ (NCAVP) 2003 report on hate violence, which recorded 2,051 incidents from only 11 reporting regions across the nation, representing only one-eighth of the U.S. population. NCAVP captured 40 percent more information on hate incidents in 2003 with limited capacity compared to the FBI’s survey, which covered the entire nation.

The NCAVP’s reporting regions included: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New York City, Columbus, Chicago (Cook County), Minnesota, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

“The FBI only reports on cases sent by local and state law enforcement agencies, and where there is no mandate for those agencies to send information to the FBI, there is absolutely no compelling reason for them to do so, beyond simply doing the right thing. Even in states with such mandates there are shortcomings,” said NCAVP’s acting executive director Clarence Patton in a Nov. 22 press release.

According to the FBI, there were a total of 727 incidents in California for all hate crime categories. On the other hand, NCAVP cited 433 anti-GLBT incidents in the Los Angeles area alone and 317 in the San Francisco area.

“The fact that the FBI’s statistics continue to dramatically undercount anti-LGBT hate at the same time that this community is experiencing an unprecedented and sustained increase in violence is simply shameful,” said Patton. “For NCAVP and its members, which clearly have far fewer resources than the federal government to consistently report more, and more detailed, information on hate crimes against LGBT people should truly be a source of embarrassment for the FBI,” continued Patton.

According to David Rubin, San Diego County deputy district attorney, the system for collecting data is complicated as there are multiple reporting systems nationwide that collect data on hate crimes. Regionally there is a registry and anti-defamation league, while on a state level the attorney general’s office collects the data. Rubin believes there are over 10,000 constituent law enforcement agencies reporting data into the FBI. In less populated areas and regions with budgetary problems, the reporting of this data is not always ideal. Crimes may be perceived and interpreted differently, sometimes not even classified as an official hate crime.

Rubin believes the system of collecting the data may be the source of the discrepancy in the FBI’s data compared to the NCAVP’s figures.

“Unless you have a single person or a single group of people, like we do here in the county, reading every single report, you’re going to get different interpretations of what’s a hate crime, what is a hate incident, and what doesn’t qualify as either… that’s going to affect your numbers,” explained Rubin. “When you add all that in, it’s hard to say the FBI is less accurate than NCAVP. It’s hard to say who is more accurate because I would have to look at the NCAVP’s methodology as well.”

“Now I happen to think, and I don’t think this is controversial… that the FBI underreports probably across the board just because they are dependent upon all these organizations that report to them,” he added.

The FBI’s statistics both overall and specific to the lesbian, gay and bisexual community remained constant from 2002 to 2003. However, according to the NCAVP report, there was an 8 percent increase in 2003, including a 26 percent spike in the last six months of 2003 – the period just after the Supreme Court’s Lawrence decision, in which a Texas state law banning private consensual sex between adults of the same sex was struck down. At the same time, a call for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage was initiated.

“This year as we do every year, we offer the expertise of NCAVP, its members and the nation’s LGBT communities to the FBI in the hope that we can find a way to work collaboratively and get a better idea of the true prevalence of hate violence in America. Such collaboration would be especially impactful given the fact that last year’s tremendous rise in anti-LGBT violence has not, and shows no sign of abating,” said Patton.

According to the FBI report, of the 1,239 hate crime incidents concerning sexual orientation, 783 were targeted at anti-male homosexuals, 187 anti-female homosexuals, 247 anti-homosexuals in general, 14 anti-heterosexuals and 9 anti-bisexuals. The FBI does not keep statistics on violence against transgender people. The city of San Diego had 32 hate crime incidents relating to sexual orientation, the highest figure among all four other categories of race, religion, ethnicity and disability. Los Angeles recorded 72 relating to sexual orientation, the second highest category next to race, which reported 90.