A woman from Portland, Oregon is facing some harsh charges after committing a hate crime. Police report that after exiting a bus she beat a mother right in front of her daughter.
According to witnesses the crime was definitely racially motivated as the woman was heard saying “I hate white people” at the time of the incident.
Nimo Jire Kalinle, a 42-year-old woman, had just exited a No.4 bus at North Fremont Street and Gantenbein Avenue on Jan. 19 when she started attacking Janae Jordan hitting her in the face repeatedly, according to court records.
Kalinle, who is is a black woman, said, “It’s because you’re white and I hate white people,” a probable cause affidavit alleges.
While the number of reported hate crimes dipped slightly in 2018, violence against individuals rose to a 16-year high, according to numbers released Tuesday by the FBI.
The FBI’s annual tally counted 7,120 hate crimes reported last year, 55 fewer than the year before. The main concern for extremism trackers, however, is the rising level of violence — the report showed an increase in the number of “crimes against persons,” such as intimidation, assault and homicide.
“We’re seeing a leaner and meaner type of hate crime going on,” said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University San Bernardino. “Homicides were up and crimes against persons were up and that’s an important thing to look at.”
Levin said the increase in assaults was almost evenly distributed across demographic groups, the most targeted being African-American, Jews, whites, homosexuals, and Latinos. The majority of hate crimes reported in 2018 were motivated by bias against race and ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation, as they have been in previous years.
