What We Found in Three Years of Documenting Hate: A Letter to Our Partners

After a spate of hate incidents in the wake of the 2016 election, we wanted to better understand why the government does such a bad job tracking hate crimes. So we launched Documenting Hate, working to uncover as much as we could about hate in America. It’s an enormous task, and we knew from the beginning we’d need lots of help. That’s where you, our partner newsrooms, came in.

Now that the collaboration is coming to an end, we wanted to share with you the impact that we’ve been able to achieve together and to thank you for working with us for these three years.

Over the course of the project, we worked with more than 180 professional newsrooms, around 20 college papers and many journalism schools. All told, we collected more than 6,000 reporting tips and thousands of pages of police records on hate crimes, and together we produced more than 230 stories. In addition to stories we produced directly, our journalism had a ripple effect; the project and its reporting were cited in hundreds more stories, and ProPublica stories about hate were reprinted by several hundred other outlets.

The reporting ProPublica and our partners did varied widely. We dug into how law enforcement agencies investigate and track hate crimes, looking at the many reasons hate crimes are falling through the cracks. We looked into how police are trained (or not) to deal with bias crimes, and why hate crimes are so difficult to prosecute. And we reported extensively on white supremacist groups, investigating members in the military and those who engaged in violence and even murder. Our two–part documentary with Frontline on those groups led to arrests and won an Emmy.

        <p data-pp-blocktype="copy" data-pp-id="3.0">We found a number of patterns in the tips we received and the police records we gathered. &ldquo;<a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/native-american-hate-crimes-go-back_n_5dfd34d2e4b0843d35fc0835?ri18n=true">Go back to your country</a>&rdquo; or &ldquo;go back to X country&rdquo; was one of the <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/feature/go-back-to-your-country">most common phrases</a> we encountered in both hate crimes and bias incidents. We saw a large number of hate incidents <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertsamaha/kids-are-quoting-trump-to-bully-their-classmates?utm_term=.huPRJ9kwq1#.ym3GdjqPOL">in schools</a>, particularly after the <a href="https://www.edweek.org/ew/projects/hate-in-schools.html">2016 election</a>. Latinos have been targeted based on the (often erroneous) belief that they are <a href="https://www.univision.com/univision-news/united-states/six-months-of-hate-how-anti-immigrant-sentiment-is-affecting-latinos-in-the-united-states">immigrants</a> or for <a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-ln-speak-english-20180528-story.html">speaking Spanish</a>. People of color reported being victimized by people who <a href="https://www.revealnews.org/article/they-spewed-hate-then-they-punctuated-it-with-the-presidents-name/">referred to the president</a> or his border and immigration policies. We found <a href="https://www.univision.com/univision-news/united-states/dear-wetbacks-this-hispanic-family-found-a-racist-letter-on-their-front-door">people of color</a> <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/get-out-black-families-harassed-in-their-own-homes">harassed by their neighbors</a> and targeted in hate incidents at <a href="https://www.univision.com/univision-news/united-states/dozens-of-hate-fueled-attacks-reported-at-walmart-stores-nationwide">superstores</a>. We heard from Muslims and people of Arab descent targeted in <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/muslim-women-face-road-rage-behind-the-wheel_us_5b29313de4b0f0b9e9a5c9a4?fbclid=IwAR3XtzFNviMx9pW6AXSdlZ6d86tWc6imX2UiuU_qG3yhWI-sESmVB61B7yM">road</a> <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1112417448899761">rage</a> <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/this-isnt-pakistan-video-racist_us_5b02db07e4b07309e05ac472">incidents</a>.</p>

Our journalism has had major impact, resulting in arrests, government reports, letters from members of Congress and more. At ProPublica, impact is at the core of what we do, so we keep pretty careful track of it. Here are some highlights of the impact we’ve had together:

As a result of ProPublica’s reporting, four members or associates of the white supremacist group Rise Above Movement were arrested in connection with violence committed at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. U.S. Attorney Thomas T. Cullen cited our stories in a press conference announcing the indictments, saying we did a “fantastic job.” The RAM members pleaded guilty.
Four other members of RAM were arrested for their roles in violent rallies in California in 2017, though a judge dismissed the charges.
A U.S. Marine was court-martialed and ousted from the service after ProPublica revealed that he was a neo-Nazi involved in violence at Charlottesville.
Following our reporting, then-Rep. Keith Ellison sent a letter to the secretary of defense requesting information on white supremacists in the military.
A member of RAM lost his job with defense contractor Northrop Grumman in the wake of our reporting.
A group of nine senators led by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., sent a letter to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos asking what the administration would do in response to racist harassment in schools and universities, citing BuzzFeed’s reporting for the project.
Following The Baltimore Sun’s reporting, Maryland state police held several trainings with local police, and the governor signed three new bills into law on hate crimes.
Following the Los Angeles Times’ reporting on hate incidents in a southern California school district, the community held a forum in response.
A Texas mayor issued an open letter following a hate incident reported by HuffPost.
After a Jewish family’s property was vandalized in Arizona, the community came together to cover the graffiti.
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights issued a nearly 300-page report on hate crimes, widely citing ProPublica’s reporting and that of our partners.

A research paper from the University of Chicago Law School on hate crime data tracking widely cited our project.
The official Virginia state after-action report on the Charlottesville rally cited ProPublica’s reporting and made recommendations for better police practices based on our journalism.
A Virginia state lawmaker urged his colleagues to watch our two-part documentary with Frontline.
Numerous police departments began sending hate crime data, updated their hate crime reporting process or fixed hate crime database problems because of our reporting.
Several police departments corrected or reviewed their hate crimes data after we found errors in records we received from them.
After we reported that police were misreporting anti-heterosexual hate crimes as anti-LGBTQ and other types of crimes, the number of these bias crimes reported to the FBI fell by half from 2017 to 2018.
Cloudflare changed its complaint policies following a ProPublica story on how the company helps support neo-Nazi sites. The company cited our reporting when it later shut down The Daily Stormer, a major neo-Nazi site.
The Matthew Shepard Foundation said it would increase resources dedicated to training police officers to identify and investigate hate crimes, citing our project.
The South Asian Americans Leading Together organization, which tracks hate crimes, cited our reporting in its annual commentary on the FBI’s 2017 hate crime data.
The Daily Stormer in Spanish removed the name of a popular Spanish forum from its site after legal action was threatened following a Univision story.
Data from our news index app was turned into an art installation displayed in Brooklyn in March 2019.

This project would be nothing without the tireless efforts of the journalists at dozens of partner newsrooms. Here are just a few highlights, from both our partners and from ProPublica:

After Hate Crimes, Victims Stuck With the Bill, The New York Times Opinion, April 2017
Kids Are Quoting Trump To Bully Their Classmates And Teachers Don’t Know What To Do About It, BuzzFeed News, June 2017
This Columbus woman went to a Bon Jovi concert for her birthday. An act of discrimination made her leave, Cincinnati Enquirer, June 2017
Hate Crime Training for Police Is Often Inadequate, Sometimes Nonexistent, ProPublica, November 2017
This Is Where Hate Crimes Don’t Get Reported, ProPublica, November 2017
Why America Fails at Gathering Hate Crime Statistics, ProPublica, December 2017
What We Discovered During a Year of Documenting Hate, ProPublica, December 2017
Dozens of hate-fueled attacks reported at Walmart stores nationwide, Univision News, March 2018
They spewed hate. Then they punctuated it with the president’s name, Reveal, April 2018
A Killing at Donkey Creek, ProPublica, April 2018
Police Are Mislabeling Crimes as “Anti-Heterosexual” Hate Crimes, ProPublica, May 2018
Documenting Hate Documentary, Part 1 and Part 2, ProPublica and Frontline, August 2018
Hate in America, News 21, August 2018

Hate in schools, Education Week, August 2018
Using the Power of the Crowd to Document Hate, ProPublica, August 2018
Hate in Maryland: From racist taunts to swastikas to a campus stabbing, bias reports up sharply in state, The Baltimore Sun, October 2018
In The Name Of Hate, Muslim Women Face Road Rage Behind The Wheel, HuffPost, October 2018
Jewish Professor Finds Swastikas Outside Her Office At Columbia Teachers College, WNYC/Gothamist, November 2018
The Cities Where The Cops See No Hate, BuzzFeed News, December 2018
City Human Rights Official Says NYPD ’Discouraged’ Her From Reporting Racist Subway Attack, WNYC/Gothamist, December 2018
Documenting Hate in America: What We Found in 2018, ProPublica, December 2018
Ojai parents receive letter after students form into a swastika on campus, Los Angeles Times, January 2019
Denver police have investigated 27 reports of racist crimes against black people since 2016. None resulted in hate crime convictions, The Denver Post, January 2019
5 Things You Need to Know About Hate Crimes in America, ProPublica, March 2019
Hate at Home, News12, September 2019
Go Back To Your Country, They Said, HuffPost, November 2019

Read all stories here.

We’re grateful to all of our partners for working on this project, and we’re proud of our collective body of work and of all the reporters who chased leads. We also couldn’t have done it without the thousands of people who submitted tips to us and whose stories we tried to tell. We’re glad we were able to get so many police records on hate crimes, and we’re grateful to jurisdictions that were responsive to our record requests. This type of reporting isn’t easy, and there are still many stories that remain untold. Although the project is coming to an end, many newsrooms — including ProPublica — are continuing to prioritize this issue. Unfortunately, much work remains to be done.

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