Worcester police report 9 hate-crime incidents in 2024, below five-year average

Police Chief Paul Saucier told the City of Worcester Public Safety Committee on May 14 that the department recorded nine hate-crime incidents in 2024, a total below the five-year average of 12.8.

Saucier read the department’s working definition of a hate crime under Massachusetts practice: “a hate crime is defined as any criminal act coupled with overt actions motivated by bigotry and bias including, but not limited to, a threatened attempted or completed overt act motivated at least in part by racial, religious, ethnic, handicap, gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation prejudice.” He said the department recorded nine incidents in 2024; five were classified as anti-Black.

Saucier gave a breakdown of incident types: one incident involved threatening email messages; three involved vandalized vehicles; one was a racial slur spray-painted on a school; one vandalized vehicle included both anti-Black and anti-Latino slurs and was counted as two incidents because more than one group was targeted. He said one incident could be classified as anti-Asian, and two incidents were classified as anti-LGBTQ: theft of pride flags from a church and from a business. No injuries were reported in the incidents Saucier described. He also said one individual was criminally charged for the theft of two flags and one female was charged for vandalizing a vehicle.

By year, Saucier gave the department’s counts as: 2024 — 9; 2023 — 5; 2022 — 16; 2021 — 27; 2020 — 8. He noted that the 2021 total was unusually high in the period after the COVID-19 pandemic and related national rhetoric.

Councilors asked questions about how Worcester compares to peer cities. Councilor Moe Bergman asked whether the department had comparative numbers for cities such as Springfield, Hartford or Providence; Saucier said he did not have that data on hand but said he could obtain it.

On classification questions, Councilor Bergman asked how age fits into hate-crime designation. Saucier said crimes against older adults are handled under separate Massachusetts statutes addressing offenses for victims over age 60 (statutory elder protections) and that a dual charge is possible if an incident meets the state hate-crime definition.

During public comment, caller David Tobias Webb said he believed the department’s count was too low and described instances that, he said, were not pursued by officers. Webb said some victims reported incidents that the department did not charge; he offered to provide specific examples to officials off the record.

The committee did not take further action on the hate-crime report at the meeting beyond asking staff to file the informational report and to provide any follow-up comparative data requested by councilors.