the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Trenton NJ, Following the release last week of top line, preliminary data regarding bias incidents in New Jersey in 2020, the Attorney General’s Office and the New Jersey State Police today published the complete dataset cataloguing 2020 bias incidents in the state. The data, which remains preliminary, is available online in spreadsheet format on the State Police website.
The complete dataset includes a breakdown of bias incidents by type of offense, victim, and location, and includes municipal-level data, among other information. The 2020 Bias Incident Report, which will be published later this year, will include further analysis of the data.
While releasing the top line data last week, Attorney General Grewal also announced that the Attorney General’s Office and the State Police will soon begin making bias incident data available to the public on a monthly basis, starting in April. These monthly bias incident reports will show breakdowns by bias type and county.
Members of the public are encouraged to report bias incidents to their local police departments, or via the NJBIAS online portal at https://bias.njcivilrights.gov, or by calling 800-277-BIAS.
For purposes of UCR reporting, a “bias incident” is a suspected or confirmed violation of New Jersey’s bias intimidation statute, N.J.S.A. 2C:16-1(a)(1) or (2), in which a victim is subjected to harassment, assault, terroristic threats, or other specified acts “because of race, color, religion, gender, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, or ethnicity.”
Because the data captures only reported bias incidents, it is under-inclusive in that it does not capture incidents that were never reported to law enforcement. According to a report from the U.S. Department of Justice, over half of the victims of hate crimes in the U.S. from 2011 to 2015 did not report them.
According to the preliminary data announced today by Attorney General Grewal and Colonel Callahan, 1,441 bias incidents were reported to New Jersey law enforcement in 2020, representing the highest annual total reported since bias crimes reporting standards were enacted in 1991. The Attorney General also announced steps that his office will be taking to make more data on bias incidents available to the public, including by beginning to release data monthly instead of annually.
The preliminary total of 1,441 reported bias incidents reflects a 45 percent increase from the total number reported in 2019. 2020 marks the second straight year of dramatic increases in reported bias incidents. In 2019, 994 bias incidents were reported to law enforcement, a 75 percent increase from the 569 incidents reported in 2018 and the largest one-year increase for the past 20 years.
In Bergen County, Englewood, Hackensack and Paramus all had 15 , while Teaneck and Fort Lee each had 12. On an interesting side note New Brunswick had 17, with Rutgers University itself reporting an 8 of the total. Ridgewood had 6 , Glen Rock had 5 and Ho-Ho-Kus none were listed. Midland Park also had none listed and we think Twp .of Washington had 1.
According to the preliminary data of reported incidents:
Black individuals were the most frequent targets of bias incidents, with 47 percent of all reported incidents in 2020 involving anti-Black bias for a total of 682. This represents an 84-percent increase over 2019, when 371 such incidents were reported.
Anti-Hispanic bias incidents increased 113 percent from 48 in 2019 to 102 in 2020.
Bias incidents targeting Asian or Pacific Islander individuals increased 82 percent from 39 in 2019 to 71 in 2020, which also represents more than a four-fold increase from 2018, when 16 incidents were reported.
Bias incidents targeting individuals on the basis of actual or perceived sexual orientation, or targeting transgender or gender non-conforming individuals increased 57 percent from 148 in 2019 to 232 in 2020.
Bias incidents targeting Arab individuals rose 55 percent from 20 in 2019 to 31 in 2020.
Anti-Islamic incidents increased 30 percent from 37 in 2019 to 48 in 2020.
Reported anti-Jewish incidents declined 14 percent in 2020 compared to 2019, from 345 to 298.
At least some of the increase in reported bias incidents likely reflects significant efforts by New Jersey’s law enforcement community to standardize their reporting practices, build trust with New Jersey’s most vulnerable populations, and ensure that all acts of bias reported to local law enforcement are immediately reported to the State.
Does this include bias incidents against Trump supporters????