Law enforcement agencies reported a total of 7,314 hate crimes in the United States in 2019, the highest figure in a decade, according to a yearly report data released by the FBI on Monday.
"Law enforcement agencies submitted incident reports involving 7,314 criminal incidents and 8,559 related offenses as being motivated by bias toward race, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender and gender identity," the FBI said in the yearly report.
The FBI said this is the largest number of hate crimes since 2008 when 7,783 such cases were reported. In 2017, 7,175 hate crime incidents were reported and 7,120 in 2018.
Last year, 5,512 hate incidents were classified as crimes against persons, 2,811 as crimes against property and 236 as crimes against society, the FBI also said.
In 4.4 per cent of the cases, the hate crimes took place in churches, synagogues, mosques and other places of worship.
Of the 6,406 known offenders, 52.5 per cent were white and 23.9 percent were African American.
