Missouri reported most ever hate crimes in 2021, FBI data shows. Kansas City led state

FBI hate crime data released this week shows that Missouri reported its highest ever number of hate crimes in 2021, the most recent year for which data is available.

Law enforcement agencies in Missouri reported 194 hate crimes to the FBI in 2021, surpassing the state’s previous record of 167 hate crimes in 1993. Of these, more than half were motivated by racial bias, according to an analysis by The Star.

Kansas City reported 39 hate crimes in 2021, by far the largest number of any jurisdiction in the state. By comparison, the city of St. Louis only reported nine.

Other jurisdictions in the metro area also reported some of the highest numbers of hate crimes in 2021: Lee’s Summit reported 10, Independence reported nine and North Kansas City reported four.

Here’s how the number of hate crimes in Missouri has changed over time. Hover over points on the graph below to see the number of hate crimes reported to the FBI each year during the 30-year period from 1991 to 2021.

Why are Missouri’s hate crime numbers higher than ever?

According to the FBI’s categorization of hate crime incidents, the leading cause of hate crimes in the state is racial bias. Racially motivated crimes consistently make up more than half of the incidents reported.

“We expect the (2021) FBI data to show a more accurate account of the rapidly escalating white supremacist violence that we see in Missouri and across the nation,” said Tom Bastian, a spokesperson for the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri.

He added that previous years’ hate crimes may have been undercounted, as law enforcement agencies were not required to share hate crime statistics with the FBI until the passage of the 2021 COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act.

Of the 119 racially motivated incidents reported in Missouri in 2021, the FBI classified 63 as anti-Black hate crimes.

It categorized 31 additional incidents as anti-white hate crimes. The FBI did not respond to questions from The Star about its criteria for classifying anti-white crimes, or crimes allegedly caused by bias against other groups in positions of societal power.

The remaining racially motivated hate crimes consisted of eight instances of anti-Hispanic or Latino bias, four of anti-Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander bias, three of anti-Arab bias, three of anti-Asian bias, three of bias against multiple races and four of bias against another race, ethnicity or ancestry.

What other types of bias motivate hate crimes in Missouri?

The second-most prevalent form of bias in Missouri’s hate crimes over the past three years has been bias based on gender and/or sexuality. The FBI reports that the third-most common type of hate crime in the state in 2021 was anti-gay with 16 incidents, followed by anti-LGBT with 10 incidents.

Anti-transgender bias was the sixth-most common, with six incidents in 2021 — all of them classified as “simple assault.” That’s the highest number of anti-transgender hate crimes ever reported in Missouri: the previous record was two hate crimes per year in 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2020. The increase comes amidst a wave of anti-transgender legislation in the state.

Small numbers of hate crimes also stemmed from religious bias in 2021, particularly anti-Jewish and anti-Sikh, for which the FBI recorded six incidents each. No instances of anti-Muslim bias were reported in 2021, despite making up the second-largest number of religious-based hate crimes in Missouri over the previous three decades.

The FBI also cataloged a handful of crimes based on bias against those with mental and physical disabilities and against members of multiple identity groups in 2021. While these numbers are small — only four in each category — they have been on the rise in recent years.

Check out the graph below to see how hate crimes in five categories increased between 2019 and 2021.

Do you have more questions about hate crimes in the Kansas City area? Ask the Service Journalism team at kcq@kcstar.com.