Think Out Loud

Annual report shows 50% reduction in hate and bias crimes and incidents in Eugene in 2021

By Gemma DiCarlo (OPB)
Oct. 11, 2022 4 p.m.

Broadcast: Tuesday, Oct. 11

00:00
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12:44

There were half as many hate and bias crimes and incidents in Eugene in 2021 as there were in 2020. That’s according to the city’s annual Hate and Bias Report, released last week. Overall, the city recorded 43 hate and bias cases in 2021 — a 54 percent decrease from 2020 and the lowest total in a decade. Joining us to put those numbers in context is Fabio Andrade, equity and community engagement manager for Eugene.

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Note: The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: We end today with some good news: hate and bias crimes and incidents in Eugene dropped by half between 2020 and 2021. That’s according to the city’s annual Hate and Bias Report, which was released last week. Overall, the city recorded 43 incidents last year, a 54% decrease from 2020 and the lowest total in a decade. Fabio Andrade is the Equity and Community Engagement Manager for Eugene. He joins us now to talk about what is happening. Welcome to Think Out Loud.

Fabio Andrade: Hi, Dave. Thanks for having me here.

Miller: Thanks for joining us. I want to start with the incidents themselves. Obviously you can’t summarize 43 different incidents, but can you give us a sense for what’s included in that total, what kinds of incidents are we talking about?

Andrade: Yes. In that total we have 27 incidents that were considered criminal incidents. There were crimes that had a bias factor involved in them. So those were investigated by Eugene police and determined to be, in fact, a bias crime. Sixteen were biased incidents. So, those are noncriminal incidents that are investigated through our office, they are supported through our office. And those involved case of discrimination in employment housing and in places of public accommodation.

Miller: Who was  most likely to be targeted in these incidents in the last year?

Andrade: It’s mostly the Black and African American community, especially in the criminal incidents. So out of the 27 incidents, 16 of those were based on race, and 12 of the 16 were against the Black and African American community.

Miller: Is there any way to know what’s not being captured in the data that you have in this report or to estimate the percentage of incidents that aren’t being reported?

Andrade: We don’t have local data on that. We do have information from the Department of Justice. They have the National Crime Victimization Survey, which says that over 50% of the criminal cases are not reported. We don’t have such a survey for the discrimination cases, but based on what we hear from people who have experienced discrimination, most of the case they have experienced were not reported to any agency.

Miller: What resources are you able to provide in your office or in other parts of the city for people who report either these crimes or these incidents?

Andrade: It is decided on a case by case basis. For example, if it’s a situation in which someone is being discriminated against in housing, we do a referral. So we do referral to some local advocacy groups or we do a referral to the Fair Housing Council of Oregon which can investigate some cases and provide more assistance to the victims. In other cases, if  someone has been a victim of a crime and they need some emotional support and social support, then we can connect people with local groups and services as well.

Miller: Let’s turn to this decrease. It wasn’t just a drop of more than 50% from 2020 to 2021, it was also the lowest number in the last decade. As I noted, what are your best guesses for what’s behind this decrease?

Andrade: We have 10 years of data in our series and we have seen a decrease after election years. So that’s something that we have seen before.

Miller: Have you seen increases in election years?

Andrade: Yes. There is an increase in the election years based on the national sentiment or some issues. Either more people feeling motivated to act based on bias and hate or people feeling more motivated to report as a reaction to the rhetoric and the bias activity that we have seen happening in those years.

Miller: So a decrease from a presidential election to 2021, maybe it wasn’t super unusual. But the level of the decrease has to be unusual because this is the lowest number in 10 years. So what else might be at play?

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Andrade: I want to believe that the services we have here in Eugene and the dedication of Eugene police to investigate hate crimes in our city may have contributed to that in that people are more aware that we have services available and that crimes can be investigated and in some situations are punished. So I hope that awareness and understanding of the kind of community we’re trying to create here may be behind in those cases. We celebrate the decline. But it’s still a lot of cases for a city of our size.

Miller: Was there a similar drop in reports of other crimes in Eugene over the same time period? I mean, can you look at this and say that it wasn’t just biased crimes that are dropping but that all crimes dropped?

Andrade: Sorry, I don’t have that information right now.

Miller: Okay. How does the reporting process work in Eugene for bias incidents? Because as for crimes, the police department would collect those, but what about incidents that don’t meet the level of being a prosecutable crime?

Andrade: Here in Eugene, both kinds of incidents–the criminal and non criminal ones–can be reported either to Eugene police or to our office. What happens is if people report to police, there is a different procedure that police officers will follow. If they determine that the case is not a crime, then they refer it back to us and we include it as an incident in our report. If someone contacts our office first and they describe the situation and we believe there to be a criminal nature to the incident, we can also support victims in reporting to police if they wish. So we have the two departments here, Eugene police and our office working in collaboration on those.

Miller: What have you found in terms of what people prefer in terms of those two different avenues to report either to your office or to the police? I can imagine different reasons for going to different places.

Andrade: Yes. From the people who believe they have been a victim of a crime and they come to our office instead of the police first, what we hear is that some people don’t feel comfortable going to the police first. So they believe that talking to a civilian would be a better option. Sometimes they do talk to us and we inform them that we believe that could be a criminal case and then they connect with police. So the Eugene Police Department has a team of detectives that has been assigned to investigate hate and bias crimes, and they have been trained and have been developing connections with different groups in the community so they can be more supportive of victims of such crimes.

Miller: How does the system that you’ve just described  compare to the relatively-new statewide system that we now have?

Andrade: There are differences in how data is collected and reported out of the state system. There are similarities as well, like people can connect with the state and report the incident and the staff at the Bias Hotline for the state will tell people if they believe it’s a criminal incident and provide them with information on how to report to law enforcement. In Eugene, we have been reporting our data based on the number of incidents. For the state, they report on the number of victims. So the numbers that we have in our series and the numbers that have been made available for the state in the past two years, cannot be compared because the metrics and the methodology for reporting are very different.

Miller: Will you continue to do your city report or will you, going forward, defer to the state?

Andrade: The system was created in Eugene because we didn’t have another avenue for people to report bias incidents and hate crimes. It’s better support for people who have been victimized and won’t report hate crimes. But now that the state has a system, people may connect with the state or with our office if they live in Eugene. So since that system is available for everyone in Oregon, we have been discussing with staff at the Oregon Department of Justice about directing our callers to the state system.

Miller: I should point out the number for that in case people want to make their own calls to report a bias or hate incident to this new statewide reporting system, it’s 1-844-924-bias or 1-844-924-2427. What prompted the city to create this 10 years ago?

Andrade: The report was first published 10 years ago, but the system is a little bit older. It came out of the Human Rights Commission here in Eugene and local community members who believed that everyone should be accepted and supported in our community. At first it was a volunteer service. We had members of the Human Rights Commission Collecting reports and providing support. And then 10 years ago, the service was fully offered by staff. And that’s when we had the first report published.

Miller: We have been talking about data from 2021 because I imagine it takes a while to actually go through all these reports and finalize an annual report, but the fact is that we’re talking in October of this year. Do you have a sense right now for how 2022 is going to compare to 2021?

Andrade: As of now, I think we can expect a similar level of activity, perhaps a small increase, but many cases are still open. So that’s why it takes a long time for us to report. We have to wait until investigations are completed. So the data may change over the months.

Miller: But so far it looks like not a big increase from, from the big decrease that you saw last year?

Andrade: Yes, that’s right. For both criminal and noncriminal incidents, we have seen a similar trend compared to 2021.

Miller: Fabio Andrade, thanks very much for joining us.

Andrade: Thank you.

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