Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI Crime News
Present: Hate Crimes and Tops Supermarket
Across four decades, FBI special agents and law enforcement officers here in Birmingham took this case personally and saw it through to completion. Their dedicated work—and the dedicated work of hundreds of other agents on countless other cases—is part of the Bureau’s DNA.
Today, the FBI is the only federal agency charged with investigating civil rights violations, which include hate crimes and color-of-law violations.
Civil rights violations have been increasing for some time, which is why, in 2021, the FBI elevated civil rights to a national threat priority. In plain English, that means the program receives more resources and that civil rights violations jump a lot of other investigations in priority at every field office. And, this year, we increased the number of people specifically committed to investigating civil rights crimes to 176 special agents, plus 57 analysts.
Nationally, we’ve seen a steady rise in the volume of hate crimes. In 2022, across all levels of law enforcement in the United States, more than 13,000 hate crime incidents were reported. About half of those were crimes motivated solely by race, ethnicity, or ancestry biases. We’re still collecting nationwide data for 2023, but just looking at our work at the FBI, our investigations led to more hate crimes charges last year than any year since the turn of the century.
Almost certainly, the most high-visibility ongoing case is the mass-casualty shooting at the Tops Supermarket in Buffalo, New York, in May of 2022. The shooter posted online about his fears of what he called “white genocide.” He targeted a nearby community with the highest percentage of Black residents and then meticulously plotted, scouted, and prepared for a series of shootings.
He was ahead of his planned schedule when he stepped out of his car wearing body armor and livestreaming from a helmet cam. Yelling racial slurs, he shot four people in the parking lot before he entered the store and began targeting anyone who was Black.
In just a couple minutes, he’d shot 13 people, and the 10 he killed were all Black.
As horrific as that was, it could’ve been far worse if Buffalo Police Department officers had not arrived within two minutes of the start of the shooting. They stopped him from reaching his car—where he had more weapons and ammunition—and from moving to a second location.
Now, I can’t talk much about the ongoing federal case, but those are all details from the shooter’s guilty plea to state charges of murder, terrorism, and hate crimes. In February, a New York court sentenced him to 10 consecutive life sentences, plus 75 years, without the possibility of parole.
And our case has also led to 27 federal charges: 13 hate crimes charges relating to the people he shot, one more for attempting to kill other African American people nearby, and 13 firearms charges relating to his hate crimes, with that trial scheduled to begin late next year.
I know that case has everyone’s interest across the country, but I don’t want to leave you with the impression that something needs to be a capital case—or even to include violence—for the FBI to get involved.
One recent case we investigated was up in Billings, Montana. In November 2020, a man walked into a church, hungry and needing help. The elderly woman working there gave him a gift card and wished him well. He should have just been grateful, but he didn’t like that the woman who helped him was Black.
So five days later, he called the church and left a voicemail, claiming to be a church donor and saying he would donate a lot more money if the church would just stop employing African Americans—although the term he used was not “African Americans.”
After he made three more calls, the church contacted the local police. A detective spoke to the man, who promised not to call the church again. Three days later, he left another voicemail, apologizing.
But, it turned out, he wasn’t done. Over the next year and a half—even after leaving the state—he continued calling the church, using racial slurs and making threats, so the FBI got involved and tracked him down. October of 2022, he was indicted on federal charges, arrested in Indiana, and held in federal custody. Last June, he pled guilty to harassment, and, in October, he was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison.
Now, that case didn’t make national headlines, but those threats made a huge impact on that church and led a woman—who’d just tried to help someone—to fear for her safety. And we were not going to rest until she felt safe again.