Hate and bias crimes and incidents in Eugene dropped by more than 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 Eugene’s equity and community engagement manager. He said the city has previously seen decreases in the year following an election year, similar to 2021.
“There is an increase in the election years based on the national sentiment around some issues,” Andrade said. “Either more people feel motivated to act based on bias and hate or people feel more motivated to report as a reaction to the rhetoric.”
According to the 2021 report, Black residents were the main target of non-criminal incidents, as well as crimes involving physical violence. Jewish residents were the main target of vandalism.
Andrade said while the drop in incidents is a step in the right direction, work still remains to be done.
“We celebrate the decline, but it’s still a lot of cases for a city of our size,” he said.
The Oregon Department of Justice launched a statewide hotline for reporting hate and bias incidents in 2020 and began compiling its own annual reports that year. Andrade said his office is considering directing Eugene’s calls to that system in the future.
As for 2022, Andrade said so far, the city has seen a similar number of criminal and noncriminal incidents as it did in 2021. He said he doesn’t expect to see a large increase by the end of the year.
“I want to believe that the services we have here in Eugene and the dedication of Eugene police to investigating hate crimes in our city may have contributed to that,” Andrade said. “I hope that awareness and understanding of the kind of community we’re trying to create here may be behind those [fewer] cases.”
Fabio Andrade spoke to “Think Out Loud” host Dave Miller. Click play to listen to the full conversation:
