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CSUSB expert in hate crimes interview for article on Austin, Texas, bombingsABC NewsMarch 17, 2018
Brian Levin, CSUSB criminal justice professor and director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, was interviewed as part of an article about three recent package bombings that killed two people and injured two others — all of them African-American or Hispanic — in Austin, Texas, recently. Authorities said they are not ruling out hate as a motive.
Reports of hate crimes in Austin rose by 46 percent in 2016, but that is against the relatively small totals of 13 in 2015 and 19 in 2016, according to the FBI’s annual report on hate crimes. The city has nearly 950,000 residents.
Statewide in Texas -- the nation’s second-most populous state with about 26.9 million residents -- the total number of reported hate crimes in 2016 was just 178, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Texas Crime Report.
That fits the trend of roughly 200 hate crimes getting reported each year to law enforcement agencies in Texas, according to publicly-available Texas Crime Reports analyzed by ABC News.
But those numbers strike hate-crimes expert Levin as suspiciously low for such a big state.
“Relative to its population, Texas reports fewer hate crimes than other big states,” said Levin.
He noted that California -- which with 38.8 million residents is the only state bigger than Texas -- reported 931 hate crimes in 2016. New York, the nation’s fourth-most populous state with a population of 19.4 million reported 595 such crimes.
“Something is wrong when Texas, as a state, has fewer hate crimes than some of the major cities in the U.S.,” Levin said.
Read the complete article at “Package bombings that killed 2 seen as possible hate crimes in state where hate crimes underreported: Experts.”
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