US Homeless Killings Highest in Decade

By Irwin Becker

Forty-three homeless persons were killed last year and many more injured in brutal attacks which has led to a movement for the FBI to list these as hate crimes, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless. The numbers of killings in 2008 were 27.

Those who worked on this homeless study attribute the rise in fatal attacks to several factors: the tough economy, popular videos of “bum fights,” online games that trivialize attacks, increased gang initiations involving homeless assaults and municipal crackdowns on homeless tent cities that have bred hostility, according to the report in The New York Times on August 19th.

Rhode Island and Florida were cited as joining with Maine and Maryland as the only states that now list protection of the homeless as hate crime victims. The report of the rise in homeless attacks comes as violent crime nationwide, as compiled by the FBI, declined 5.5 percent last year from the previous year.
“We’re seeing a level of hatred building to the point that it’s deadly now, said Neil Donovan, director of the homeless coalition that compiled the data.