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TBI: Hate crimes, violence against officers up in 2018

According to the TBI's latest reports, Tennessee saw an increase in both hate crimes and cases of violence against officers last year compared to 2017.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation released its annual reports detailing hate crimes and violence against officers.

According to the TBI, hate crimes rose by 1% in Tennessee in 2018 compared to 2017 with 196 victims of known bias and 364 victims of some unknown motivation.

Crimes against persons made up 75.1% of all known bias offenses in 2018, with property crimes making up the remaining 24.9%. 

Of the known offenses, racial/ethnic.ancestry bias accounted for 55.6% of all cases, with sexual bias at 21.9%, religious bias at 14.8% and disability bias at 7.7%.

The majority of all hate crimes in 2018, 31.6%, were reported as Anti-African American. A combined 20.3% were Anti-LGBTQ, 9.2% were Anti-White, 7.7% were Anti-Hispanic or Latino, 6.1% were Anti-Mental Disability, and 4.6% were Anti-Jewish.

Of the crimes committed against people, a majority were either intimidation, simple assault or aggravated assault. Most property crimes involved vandalism, and most known offenders of all crimes -- nearly 38% -- were between ages 25 -34. 

The TBI also released its Law Enforcement Officers Killer or Assaulted (LEOKA) report for 2018.

Violence against officers was also up by nearly 200 more cases in 2018 compared to 2017.

According to the TBI, 2,313 LEOKA victims were reported across the state -- one of them being a murder victim. In 2017, there were 2,137 LEOKA victims.

A majority of victims in 2018, some 70.4%, were not hurt in their incidents, with 26.1% sustaining a minor injury and the remaining 3.5% suffering a major injury of some sort.

A majority of incidents, 1,141, involved simple assault. 676 cases of aggravated assault, 132 cases of intimidation and one murder were reported.

Of the officers, nearly 71% of all victims were either assigned to one-officer vehicles with assistance or one-officer vehicles alone without any assistance. 

Most incidents happened on a highway or road, inside a home, a parking lot, or at a jail. 

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