It’s odd how police sometimes are very reluctant to use the label “hate crime,” but other times rush to use it. An example of the latter phenomenon took place in Fresno, California. Patrick Poole reports in PJ Media:

A vandalism attack on the Islamic Cultural Center of Fresno on Christmas Day was immediately branded by Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer as a “hate crime,” and the “Islamophobia” grievance industry began to gear up in response. Now that a suspect has been arrested, the narrative is quickly collapsing.

The AP reports:

In the search for a suspect, Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer had said that the broken windows and bleach poured on an American flag inside the Islamic center appeared to be a hate crime. On Saturday, Dyer said that investigators interviewed Khan, and their theory has changed. “It was obviously not as we thought,” said Dyer, adding that police will let FBI agents decide whether hate-crime charges are warranted.

Khan confessed, telling officers he was upset with people at the Islamic center for talking down or bullying him, Dyer said.

This incident doesn’t seem to fall into the category of a hat crime hoax, as it was not perpetrated to crate the illusion of a hate crime done by another group. But Poole points out that a member of Khan’s family was allowed to speak at the police news conference saying that he was “mentally ill.” That rush to label the perp mentally ill raises some suspicions in my mind.

Colin Flaherty adds:

Hate crime statistics are the most misleading source of information about racial violence. To be a hate crime, the miscreant has to sprinkle some racial epithets around in front of witnesses or leave a note or issue a press release. Even then, local, state and national authorities rarely want a piece of it. That is what the young couple in Brooklyn found out last year when their car was surrounded by black people and they were assaulted, all while their attackers uttered the requisite racial terms.

But the place where reporters go wrong is to say that just because something is not sanctioned as a hate crime, that there is no racial motivation involved in the violence.

That is equally as silly. Consider: Last year in New Haven, 500 black people created violence and mayhem at a party called “An All Black Affair.”  Hate crime. Probably not. Random? Absolutely not.

Earlier this month, Mayor DeBlasio attempted to school Rudy Guiliani on the facts of racial significance when it occurred in patterns. Just look at Ferguson, Staten Island and Cleveland, he said. That was a pattern that proved that racist police are killing people for no reason whatsoever.

Yet, all over the country, we have a pattern of black mob violence and black on white crime that is astronomically out of proportion, and to many reporters and public officials that has no meaning because some nameless, faceless law clerk said it did not violate hate crime laws.

I’m hard pressed to think of an act of black on white crime that does not involve resentment, hostility and hate.  

I don’t see any reason to wait around for that flawed designation before we start calling people on it.