Hate crimes drop across Southern Nevada, FBI reports

By Ana Ley

Thursday, Dec. 18, 2014 | 2 a.m.

Law enforcement agencies throughout the Las Vegas Valley had a drop in hate crimes last year, according to recently released FBI statistics.

The report, released Dec. 8, offers a glimpse of how prevalent the incidents are in Southern Nevada. But because hate crimes are tricky to detect and define, it probably doesn’t offer a complete picture.

“Sometimes hate crimes are a very difficult thing to prove,” said Natalie Collins, a spokeswoman with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Nevada.

The FBI tallied data for the valley’s three largest law enforcement agencies — the Metro, Henderson and North Las Vegas police departments.

Here’s what the statistics show:

The per capita rate for hate crimes is down throughout the valley.

In 2013, the valley had three hate crime incidents per 100,000 residents. That’s down one incident compared with the year before.

In total, 68 incidents were reported in 2013, down 23 percent by 18 incidents.

Among the three agencies, North Las Vegas had the biggest drop.

North Las Vegas accounted most for the valleywide drop — the city had a reduction across all hate crime categories.

In 2012, the agency reported 10 incidents. It only had two the next year — one was motivated by sexual orientation and the other by ethnicity.

Race and ethnicity were the biggest motivators throughout the valley.

After race and ethnicity, the main motivators for race crimes are religion and sexual orientation.

But across crime categories throughout the valley, incidents dealing with race and ethnicity also had the biggest drop, down 19 total incidents from 54, or 43 percent.