Aurora and Denver both sat at the top of the list of Colorado cities with the most hate crimes reported last year, and offered little change from 2016.
On Tuesday morning, the FBI released its annual compilation of bias-motivated incidents across the United States. Titled “Hate Crime Statistics, 2017,” the report breaks down these crimes by state and city based on data submitted by 16,149 law enforcement agencies across the United States.
Between all of those agencies, the FBI gathered 7,175 criminal incidents and 8,437 related offenses that were motivated by bias toward race, ethnicity or ancestry, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender, and gender identity in 2017.
Of those 7,175 criminal incidents reported across the country, 106 of them were in Colorado. The state reported 104 in 2016.
Law enforcement in Denver, which boasts the largest population in the state, reported 17 different hate crimes related to the following biases:
- Race, ethnicity or ancestry: 9
- Religion: 2
- Sexual orientation: 6
Authorities did not report any crimes motivated by bias against disability, gender or gender identity in Denver in 2017.
In 2016, the city submitted 19 biased-related crimes.
Aurora, which has a population a little more than half of Denver’s, reported 18 hate crimes. Those incidents were spurred to biases against:
- Race, ethnicity or ancestry: 14
- Religion: 3
- Sexual orientation: 1
Aurora also did not report any bias-motivated crimes related to disability, gender or gender identity. In 2016, law enforcement in the city reported 18 bias-motivated crimes, including 15 that were against a race, ethnicity or ancestry.
Colorado’s second-largest city, Colorado Springs, only saw one bias-motivated crime in 2017, according to the report. There was just one incident that year, and it was related to religion bias. The year prior saw six hate crimes.
Across the United States, the most common bias-motivated hate crime in 2017 stemmed from anti-black or anti-African American interests — 2,013 incidents in total. The following are the subsequent highest-ranking crimes motivated by bias against:
- Jewish people: 938 incidents
- White people: 741
- Gay men: 679
- Hispanics or Latinos: 427
About 5,000 of the hate crime offenses were against a person, while the others were against property or society. Of those hate crimes against an individual, 44.9 percent were for intimidation, 34.3 were simple assault and 19.5 percent were for aggravated assault. In addition, 23 were rapes, 15 were murders and one was human trafficking.
To read the FBI's full Hate Crime Statistics (2017) report, click here. Use the interactive infographic below to explore how many hate crimes have occurred in each Colorado city in 2017.