BCA's Hate Crime Reporting Process Questioned -
Investigator Finds Under Reporting
(St. Cloud, MN) - A St. Cloud civil rights web site, IBranch.org, is questioning the accuracy of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension's (BCA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) 2002 hate crime report for Minnesota. According to both agencies, hate crimes in Minnesota dropped by 1.4% to 3% in 2002, however IBanch.org (http://www.ibranch.org) has found under reporting issues in the BCA's hate crime reporting process and believes hate crime in Minnesota may have increased in 2002.
In one instance, IBranch.org found that the BCA had under-recorded the number of reported hate crimes, in one jurisdiction, by almost 40% and there may be up to 30 unrecorded hate crimes that were submitted to the BCA in 2002.
IBranch.org recently completed an investigation on the issue and the results can be found at http://www.ibranch.org/inaccuracies_in_the_fbi_2002_hate_crime_report.aspx.
In December 2002, in response to complaints about the handling of discrimination complaints by the City of St. Cloud's Human Rights Office, IBranch.org launched an investigation into the handling of discrimination complaints filed with the office. During the investigation, IBranch.org an Investigator, Richard Williams, determined that the St. Cloud Human Rights Office had informed victims of hate crimes in St. Cloud that they could report the offenses to their office. Williams then began to track how reported hate crimes were being handled by the office and the St. Cloud Police Department.
Using the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act, he requested monthly hate crime reports for the St. Cloud Police Department for 2002 from the BCA and the St. Cloud Police Department in May of 2002. Both the BCA and St. Cloud Police Department responded with 7 reported hate crimes for 2002 (http://www.ibranch.org/pdfs/hate_crimes/St_Cloud_2002_Bias_Offense_Reports.pdf).
In June of 2003, the BCA released its yearly hate crimes report for 2002 and Williams was surprised to find that the BCA listed only 4 reported hate crimes for St. Cloud (http://www.ibranch.org/pdfs/minnesota_bca/2002_Bias_Motivated_Crimes_Summary_First_Report.pdf).
Williams wrote to the Superintendent of the BCA, Micheal Campion, requesting an explanation for the difference in the BCA final report and the raw data he had received from the BCA. The BCA did not respond, but in July of 2003 it quietly changed its report to reflect all of the reported hate crimes for St. Cloud (http://www.dps.state.mn.us/bca/CJIS/Documents/Crime2002/02tab36.pdf & http://www.dps.state.mn.us/bca/CJIS/Documents/Crime2002/02BIAS.pdf).
Williams then requested Monthly Bias Offense Reports from 4 additional jurisdictions in the state, to check their reports against the BCA's final report. Of the jurisdictions that cooperated with the Minnesota Government Data Practices requests, he found an additional missing monthly report and indications that some local law enforcement agencies may have not been submitting all hate crime complaints filed with their departments.
Overall IBranch.org found that the BCA's error rate for the recording of submitted monthly Bias Offense Reports for 2002 (for the law enforcement agencies they were able to obtain data from) was about 15% and determined that there may be up to 30 unrecorded hate crimes that were submitted to the BCA in 2002 that didn't make it into the BCA's final report.
IBranch.org is calling on political leaders to launch an investigation into the BCA's handling of Bias Offense reports submitted by local law enforcement agencies and the submission of hate crime reports by law enforcement agencies to the BCA.
The St. Cloud civil rights web site will also inform the FBI of the problems with it has detected in its yearly Hate Crime Report for 2002 and request that it strike the Minnesota report from its yearly report until the recording issues can be resolved on a local level.
IBranch.org will continue its investigation into the problems at the St. Cloud Human Rights Office and reported acts of discrimination by St. Cloud city government.
Richard Williams
