by Ashley Archibald
(SOUTH SEATTLE EMERALD) The first time Brianna Auffray’s client went to the police about a potential arson, they took down a report, but they did not classify it as a hate crime — despite a derogatory note left near the damage. The second time a fire was set at the same family’s home, law enforcement acknowledged that there appeared to be a pattern of arson but still didn’t change the classification. The message from the police was “who’s to know what their motives were?” said Auffray, who is the legal and policy manager for the Council on American Islamic Relations Washington (CAIR-WA).
The third time a fire was set, with an explicitly discriminatory message written next to the damage, police deemed it a hate incident. But to Auffray’s knowledge, there was still little communication with neighbors and no one was charged in connection to the crime.
“This family is living in extreme fear because, from their perspective, they’re very obviously being targeted over and over again. To their opinion and mine, they were very explicit, targeted based on [being] a protected class and there’s been nothing done,” Auffray said, noting that the family are both Muslim and immigrants.
“They ended up feeling like they needed to move, and that’s what happened,” Auffray added.
Nationally, reported hate crimes and incidents actually ticked down last year in 18 large cities, but not in Seattle. Locally, reports jumped from 484 to 791 between 2019 and 2020, with most incidents targeting Black people.
And yet, hate crimes and incidents go vastly underreported in general. That, advocates say, is partially because there are so many barriers to reporting and a satisfactory outcome is so rare.
Nationally, the gap between hate crime or incident reporting to law enforcement is stark. According to a 2019 analysis, law enforcement agencies reported 8,770 hate incidents to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) between 2004 and 2012. However, a national survey of victims conducted each year found 269,000 victimizations when people were asked to report themselves.