35 hate crimes in Utah in '06

WASHINGTON — Hate crime incidents in the United States rose last year by nearly 8 percent, the FBI reported Monday, as racial prejudice continued to account for more than half the reported instances.

Police across the nation reported 7,722 criminal incidents in 2006 targeting victims or property as a result of bias against a particular race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnic or national origin or physical or mental disability. That was up 7.8 percent from the 7,163 incidents reported in 2005.

In Utah there were 35 hate crimes reported for 2006. However, FBI special agent Juan Becerra said the statistics should be used as a base guideline rather than an average picture of hate-motivated crimes in the state.

"Some agencies could be over-reporting and some agencies could be under-reporting," Becerra said.

And only a fraction of the state's 112 law enforcement agencies that report crime statistics to the federal government each year filed numbers for hate crime incidents and offenses

According to the FBI, in 2005 only 14 reported a total 44 incidents. The 35 incidents in 2006 were reported by 21 Utah agencies.

Although noose incidents and beatings among students at a Jena, La., high school occurred in the last half of 2006, they were not included in the report. Only 12,600 of the nation's more than 17,000 local, county, state and federal police agencies participated in the hate-crime reporting program in 2006, and neither Jena nor LaSalle Parish, in which the town is located, was among the agencies reporting.

Nevertheless, the Jena incidents, and a rash of subsequent noose incidents around the country, have spawned civil rights protests in Louisiana and last week at Justice Department headquarters in Washington, D.C.

In Utah, there has been one such incident earlier this year, which Becerra said the FBI is investigating as a possible hate crime. In that case a black man found a noose by his car at a Magna gas station.

In the Jena case, the department said it investigated the incident but decided not to prosecute because the federal government does not typically bring hate crime charges against juveniles.