Saturday, November 29, 2003

Daily South Town: Police in Illinois underreporting hate crimes  

Police in Illinois underreporting hate crimes: "The annual report on hate crimes committed in Illinois may give a tally that's far below the number of incidents that actually occur.
State law directs all local police to report hate crimes to the Illinois State Police, which forwards the data to the FBI.
No one is enforcing the requirement.
Only 59 of Illinois' 1,099 crime-fighting agencies filed hate crime information in 2002, according to the FBI. The agency uses the numbers in the national hate crimes report, which was released earlier this month.
According to the state and FBI figures, 199 hate crimes were reported in Illinois in 2002. But at least 26 hate crimes went unreported from just four law enforcement agencies in the Chicago suburbs alone."