Hate crimes reported to the FBI jumped from 10 to 27 the day after President Trump was elected in 2016, The Washington Post reported Friday.
More hate crimes with racial or ethnic bias were reported on Nov. 9 than any other day in 2016 and remained elevated for the next 10 days.
{mosads}One such hate crime was an alleged plot by three white men to bomb a Kansas mosque for Somali Muslim refugees the day after the election.
Their trial began on Thursday, the Post reported.
Defense attorney Jim Pratt said his client Patrick Stein was influenced by the charged language during the campaign and referred to Muslims as “cockroaches.”
Stein was recorded by an FBI informant saying “The only good Muslim is a dead Muslim” and “If you’re a Muslim, I’m going to enjoy shooting you in the head.”
Hate crimes have typically spiked during election years since the early 1990s, according to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.
When former President Obama was first elected in 2008, there was a 21 percent spike in reported hate crimes the next day.
It’s unclear why election years bring the sudden increase, the Post reported. It could be from people feeling frustrated or energized by election results or victims feeling emboldened to come forward with the underreported crimes.
The FBI has been collecting data on hate crimes since Congress passed the Hate Crime Statistics Act in 1990 to collect information about crimes based on race, religion, sexual orientation or ethnicity.