Middlesex DA’s office reports 39% spike in hate-related incidents in one month

In the past month, reports of hate-related incidents in Middlesex County increased 39% over the total received in the six months prior, according to the county district attorney's office.

“Between the end of April and today, we’ve received 46 reports of incidents. The majority have been based on race, with smaller numbers based on religion, sexual orientation and sexual identity,” District Attorney Marian Ryan said Tuesday during a virtual meeting of the Anti-Hate, Anti-Bias Task Force, which convenes community members, lawmakers and law enforcement across Middlesex County to discuss hate incidents and potential solutions.

Ryan’s office said at the time of its last task force meeting on Oct. 26, it had received 33 reports since tracking began in April.

The reports have come from Arlington, Burlington, Cambridge, Dracut, Malden, Newton, Newtonville, North Reading, Pepperell, Somerville, Stow, Sudbury, Westford, Wilmington and Woburn. Ryan told the task force that her office is planning to digitally map the complaints for the public to see what incidents occurred in their city or town.

“We are continuing to collect and monitor that, and we now have a sufficient number that we can start populating that map that we’re creating of our 54 communities. So you’ll be able to go on and look at your own community and see what’s being reported there,” she explained in the Zoom meeting.

The Anti-Hate, Anti-Bias Task Force has met eight times since it launched in August 2020. It was created in response to multiple incidents, including the defacing of a George Floyd mural in Stoneham, anti-Semitic graffiti in Arlington and Bedford, and a man speeding through a group of Newton Black Lives Matter protesters. Ryan’s office launched a website for victims and witnesses to report hate and bias incidents at the end of April 2021.

The local trend echoes a regional and national one. The FBI says there were 310 hate crime incidents in Massachusetts in 2020, involving 408 victims. Reported hate crimes and incidents skyrocketed nationally in 2020 by 25% to over 7,700, according to the bureau.