Hate crimes on the rise in Clark County

As Hate Crimes Awareness Month comes to a close, the reason behind the month rings louder than ever before.

There have been 110 reported hate crimes in Clark County in 2024 so far, according to the Nevada Department of Public Safety. That is a 189 percent increase from the number of incidents in 2023. Hate crimes also increased in Nevada and the rest of the country. The FBI’s most recent hate crime report identified 11,862 hate crime incidents in 2023, the most since the bureau started collecting the data in 1991.

Hate crimes are defined as a criminal offense “with an added element of bias,” according to the Nevada Department of Public Safety. The Southern Poverty Law Center October campaign aims to “encourage difficult but essential conversations about how we can prevent hate from taking root in the first place — and how we can rid the country of bias-motivated violence.”

Athar Haseebullah, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that hate crimes have been exacerbated by the “toxic political rhetoric.”

“We need to hold all politicians accountable whenever they should engage in the peddling of xenophobia or bigotry against any group,” Haseebullah said.

Spikes in 2020, 2024

Frank Cooper, a UNLV law professor and director of the program on race, gender and policing, agreed with this assessment. The data from the past five years also shows a spike in 2020, with 97 incidents. The number then fell to 65 incidents in 2021 and 55 in 2022, according to the Nevada Department of Public Safety data. In both 2020 and 2024, Cooper noted that Donald Trump ran on “anti-immigrant and other bias supporting propositions.”

In addition to the increase in political tensions, UNLV Sociology Professor Chenghui Zhang said that it could also have to do with increased awareness and people being more vocal about hate crime victimization.

“Victims know better about hate crimes and are more willing to seek help from the police regarding hate crimes,” Zhang wrote in an email to the Review-Journal. “Reporting to the police is always a good way to reduce crimes because it can mobilize criminal justice resources and direct them to where needed the most.”

Global tensions have also contributed to an increase in hateful incidents, even if they did not rise to the level of crimes. Data showed an increase in hate crimes and hate incidents against both the Muslim and Jewish populations in the United States after the start of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

The Council of American-Islamic Relations said it received a total of 8,061 complaints of anti-Muslim bias in 2023, with 607 of those complaints deemed hate crimes or incidents. The council said the total number of complaints was the highest number it has ever recorded in its history, and that nearly half of all of the complaints received in 2023 were reported in the final three months of the year.

The Anti-Defamation League, which tracks both criminal and non-criminal acts of hate against Jews, counted a total of 8,873 antisemitic incidents in 2023, a 140 percent increase from the prior year, and the highest number on record since ADL began tracking such data in 1979.

Haseebullah added that the government cannot “legislate their way out of stopping hatred” and said people also need to engage in self-reflection and have difficult conversations with each other about biases.

Cooper called for an increase in civic education.

“I’ve learned by social contact that different doesn’t mean that I denigrate that person. So a big part of the solution is we need to continue to have diverse and integrated learning,” he said.

Contact Katie Futterman at kfutterman@reviewjournal.com. Follow @ktfutts on X.