June 6, 2016

Associated Press

Brandon White was jumped outside an Atlanta convenience store by a group of young men yelling gay slurs. He was punched and kicked, and a tire was thrown at his head.

State prosecutors eventually filed charges in the February 2012 attack. And yet in its reports to the FBI, the Atlanta Police Department said it didn’t investigate any hate crimes between January and September that year. And the department didn’t submit any information at all for the final three months of 2012.

“For them to say there were no hate crimes in February, we know that isn’t true,” said White, 24. “That there makes it harder to trust the police.”

The FBI’s guidelines say an incident should be reported as a hate crime if a “reasonable and prudent” person would conclude an attack was motivated by bias.

 

http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/civil-rights-cradle-hate-crime-reporting-remains-uneven-n586486