Interesting. It also looks like the number of precincts reporting hate crimes has gone up by ~5% as well. It looks like the population covered from the participation tables increased 5.7% from 2016 so per capita it looks like a ~11% increase which is pretty significant.<p>Interestingly anti-black, anti-gay and anti-Muslim are all down by % compared to 2016 numbers. anti-Protestant, anti-Mormon, anti-Semetic and, anti-Sikh increased by % (not necessarily by raw number)<p>Another interesting tidbit is that anti-male hate crimes tripled while anti-female hate crimes remained constant. (total count of both is < 50)
It could be that reporting of hate crimes rose as, due to the polarisation of politics, more people now consider certain opinions to be hate crimes. Last year the SPLC added anti-FGM campaigner Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Islamic reform advocate Maajid Nawaz to their list “anti-Muslim extremists”.
17% seems like an insanely large increase and I'm doubtful that there was an increase of that magnitude wen other crime decreased.<p>A few cities changing their nonofficial default policy on how they prosecute certain kinds of crimes could easily account for a net change of 1000 or so instances. DAs are often elected positions so they often change these sorts of default stances on mundane policy as way to make their statistics look more politically convenient. Alternatively, reporting could have gotten better so hate crimes that were not previously reported may now be reported.<p>Of course there's always year to year changes in these sorts of things but a 17% increase in the face of a net decrease of other violent crime seems anomalous. Remember, these are reported hate crimes, not convictions for hate crimes.