Zachary Pounds threw in a racial slur as he swore at Michael Cleckley, hit the black man on the head with a beer bottle and slashed his arm with a knife.

"We don't like your type here," the 20-year-old Pounds, a white man, told his victim before the 2016 attack in a rural town north of Pittsburgh.

The knife left a wound on Cleckley's arm 2 inches wide and 5 inches long.

In a plea agreement with the district attorney, Pounds and his brother pleaded guilty to assault charges, but the hate crime charges brought against Zachary were dismissed.

Richard List, a senior-ranking member of the Ellwood City Police Department, scoffed at the idea that Zachary Pounds had committed a hate crime in the first place.

"He stabbed the guy," List told PennLive. "It wasn't because of race. He was just being Zach."

Police logs across the state are filled with scores of similar incidents - ones in which a bias against someone's race, ethnicity or religion are noted in the crime report. But whether it's a failure of police to file hate-crime charges or the chargers become the go-to bargaining chip in a plea deal, these so-called hate crimes seldom make it into state crime statistics.

As a result, Pennsylvania, a state of 12.7 million, continues to have a chronically low annual reporting rate of hate crimes to the FBI.

The state's 61 reported hate crimes in 2016 fell well below those reported in similar-sized states (see document at the bottom of this story) and fewer than even Utah, which has a population one-quarter that of Pennsylvania.

As part of an effort to discern why a state with 12.7 million residents reports a comparatively low number of hate crimes, PennLive has teamed with ProPublica and other news organizations to document hate nationwide.

The goal of the project is to create a reliable national resource on hate crimes that provides not only documentation but understanding.

One thing is certain: Pennsylvania has a reporting problem.

"Absolutely the numbers should be higher," said Sgt. William Slaton, who oversees hate crimes for the Pennsylvania State Police.

Intelligence reports received by state police shows these incidents are on the rise. "They are going up, but unfortunately the numbers are not reflected adequately," Slaton said.

Training or technology?



The FBI hate-crime statistics are based on a report submitted by state police. And those numbers come from information provided by law enforcement agencies across the state.

A review of police reports from across the state shows that police departments are responding to incidents that are booked as bias crimes targeting victims by race, ethnicity or religion.

Invariably, at some point between the initial arrest and the court disposition, hate-crime charges are dropped.

Law enforcement agents cite a number of reasons: Some say prosecutors often are willing to drop the charge; others point to police attitudes. They say that too often local police departments fail to recognize hate crimes or identify them as such.

State police said the agency is now investigating whether the problem is centered on training, technology or a combination of the two.

Slaton said the department is in the process of updating its record management system and implementing a new statewide system for police agencies to report crime. This fix should streamline the transfer of crime information, he said. In some smaller barracks, records are still kept on paper.

"With people inputting information into the system, there could be a margin of error," said Slaton, whose job includes monitoring hate crimes statewide and the state police response to them.

Pennsylvania's extraordinarily low count of hate crimes could be simply attributed to human oversight, Slaton said.

"It may be they thought they put the correct number in, but that can be the case for any volume of incidents, even the volume of DUIs," he said. "They could unintentionally put the wrong number in. It depends on the diligence of the person entering the number into the system."

Identifying the crime



An overhaul to its outdated reporting system will help the state police. But it won't solve the issue of how local departments handle, process and report hate crimes.

In fact, out of the 1,463 law enforcement agencies across the state that submitted numbers on crimes last year, only 20 submitted hate crime incidents reports.

"Unfortunately, and not to speak ill of local police departments, some may not know how to adequately investigate a hate crime or they may not know what a hate crime may be," Slaton said. "A lot of local police agencies aren't aware that what they are actually investigating is a hate crime. They believe it's disorderly conduct or assault."

That played out in December 2016 in a Northampton County case in which a 14-year-old white high school student targeted a 16-year-old black student in a racist video.

In his video, the white Saucon Valley High School student addressed the black student with a racial slur, referencing Kentucky Fried Chicken and welfare. He then shared the video over the social media platform Snapchat.

The front line of law enforcement overlooked the bullying and cyber harassment as a hate crime. It took Gary Asteak, the attorney who represented the targeted student, to make the case that the offense involved ethnic intimidation. Asteak's argument prompted the Northampton County district attorney's office to authorize a hate crime charge.

Asteak said a lack of recognition of hate crimes is rampant across law enforcement in Pennsylvania.

"The deeper you dig you find instances of this everywhere, but you find it was swept under the rug or handled informally or hushed up," Asteak said. "No community wants to have a reputation of being deemed racists or having racist elements. Who wants that?"

He blames Pennsylvania's low reporting rate on a lack of recognition or sensitivity to hate crimes. Asteak compares it to the #MeToo movement.

"I think it takes folks like my clients to stand up and say, 'Hey wait a minute. We don't like what is going on and we are going to do something about it,' " he said.

One issue, law enforcement agents say, is the narrow definition of the ethnic intimidation statute.

"We have to prove that the person acted with criminal intent because of malice towards a specific racial, ethnic or religious group," Dauphin County District Attorney Fran Chardo said. "There are some hurdles that have been placed. It could have been drafted more precisely."

For that reason, Chardo argues that state-by-state comparisons are misleading.

"I'm sure we are punishing people for committing hate crimes. We are just not classifying it the same way other states do," he said. "The FBI is trying to count things for every state and it's not going to translate."

But statistics show the ethnic intimidation statute seldom wields a prosecutorial muscle.

Data compiled by the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing show that in 2016 only nine adults were convicted under the ethnic intimidation law. Only one was convicted of a major offense - aggravated assault.

From 2011 to 2016, only 22 adults were convicted statewide for so-called hate crimes, and the majority of those for relatively minor offenses such as misdemeanor assaults, threats, vandalism and harassment. More than half of those convicted received probation.

The following chart shows the number of hate crime charges filed annually in Pennsylvania and the number of those charges that resulted in an individual being found guilty, or entering a guilty plea to a hate crime charge.

Of the 144 hate-crime offenses on criminal cases filed last year across Pennsylvania, 91 were declined, dismissed or withdrawn, according to a review of records kept by the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts.

These figures do not reflect the number of ethnic intimidation cases that are dismissed or dropped even before they enter the judicial system.

In 2016, for example, a Monroe County couple pleaded guilty in a case initially charged as a hate crime. Ricky Strausser, then 25, and Kimberly Ann McKee, then 19, had dumped a severed cow head in a cow sanctuary owned by a man of the Hindu faith, which regard the animals as sacred.

The ethnic intimidation charge was dropped and Strausser and McKee, who pleaded guilty to other charges, received probation. The incident did not make the end-of-the-year count for ethnic intimidation charges.

"It is shocking, but what can you do?" Dr. Sansar Sastri recently told PennLive. Sastri, owner of the Lakshmi Cow Sanctuary in Monroe County, said he was surprised that, even though the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice were involved in the investigation, the incident did not make the end-of-year ethnic intimidation crime count.

"I accepted it. I reported it to the police," Sastri said.

'We are the outlier'



With more than 1,400 local police departments, it is nearly impossible to track incidents that are charged as ethnic intimidation as they make their way through the legal system.

In some cases, such as the racially motivated stabbing at an Ellwood City tavern in Lawrence County, the charge is dropped.

"It's one of those charges you file, but usually they plead to something more serious," explained Officer Richard List, of the Ellwood City Police Department. "The DA makes the plea to save the cost of trial ... if he is pleading a felony they'll drop the lower charges."

In its end-of-the-year count, Ellwood police reported the crime as an aggravated assault. The ethnic intimidation charge never made it into the books. In 2016, the Ellwood City Police Department reported zero hate crimes in its annual submission to the Uniform Crime Reporting Program.

Sometimes prosecutors drop the ethnic intimidation charge because it is not likely to yield additional punishment in the conviction.

Ethnic intimidation is an "add-on" charge that increases an underlying offense by a degree. For example, ethnic intimidation would raise a summary offense for a criminal mischief charge to a third-degree misdemeanor; an ethnic intimidation charge would raise a first-degree misdemeanor terroristic threat to a third-degree felony.

"A lot of times we know we are going to get a good sentence, for example in an aggravated assault where there was a hate crime," Chardo said. "If the ethnic intimidation isn't going to get more time, it may very well go by the wayside and won't be reflected in the statistics because they are not going to get more time practically speaking."

Efforts in the Legislature to expand the language of the law - and protected classes - have failed over the years. The most recent reform, which was passed about 11 years ago, was overturned by the courts on procedural grounds.

Since then, efforts to expand protection under the law have failed both in the House and Senate. Crimes motivated by political orientation, gender or sexual orientation bias are not protected under the ethnic intimidation statute. Pennsylvania is one of 15 states that offer no LGBT inclusion under hate crimes law.

State Rep. Dan Frankel, D-Allegheny, who has spearheaded efforts in the lower chamber, blames what he calls an obsessive apprehension on the part of some conservative lawmakers to extend protection to the LGBT community.

"When you take a look at our neighbors to the northeast, we are the outlier," Frankel said. "Until we recognize and empower the LGBT community and give them the same standing as every other group in this state, we are going to be perceived as being out of step with the rest of the country."

Steve Miskin, a spokesman for the House GOP Caucus, said the law currently provides comprehensive protection for everyone.

"Discrimination for any reason is wrong. Harassment of any type is wrong," he said. "Once you single out one group, you basically are discriminating against other groups."

Amid a rising tide of hate crimes across the country - notably the Charlottesville riots in August 2017 that resulted in a woman's death - prosecutors are increasingly reluctant to drop the ethnic intimidation charge.

That's true in the pending case out of Chester County stemming from an arrest last year that police in Coatesville made based on a surveillance photo of a man who they say spray-painted swastikas and racial epithets throughout the community.

The Chester County district attorney's office recently made a plea offer to put George Rissell behind bars for 10 to 20 years. Rissell, who was 24 at the time of his arrest in August, last week pleaded guilty to one count of ethnic intimidation and three counts of criminal mischief. His sentencing hearing is pending.

District Attorney Tom Hogan said the fact Rissell had a prior record and the timeliness to Charlottesville and his affiliation to a white supremacist group compelled him to seek a stiff punishment.

"It certainly heightens people's awareness, but in Chester County a guy who does something like this is going to get crushed by our office," Hogan said, noting that the location of the crime, Coatesville, is a predominantly minority demographic.

"He is clearly trying to incite violence and he is clearly targeting ethnic minorities," Hogan said. "If he wants to march up down the street and yell these things, there would be nothing I could do about it. At that point I would say this is his First Amendment right. No one can bother him."

Fear is a factor

Often hate crimes are not reported because victims, particularly those who live in more rural communities, refrain from reporting the crimes to police.

Timothy Welbeck, a civil rights attorney for the Philadelphia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said victims are sometimes afraid to come forward. Some might have questionable immigration status; others have had unfavorable encounters with law enforcement or fear retaliation if they were to speak out.

"Many are fearful of coming forward," Welbeck said. "Even with the increased reports we receive, I would argue it's only a fraction of what is happening across the state and country."

In the wake of the anti-Muslim sentiment that welled up nationwide with the election of President Trump, hate crimes against Muslims soared.

Welbeck said the majority of hate crime victims who contact his office do so at a breaking point after years of being victimized.

"They contact us when they are at their wits end and at the point when harassment has become unbearable," Welbeck said.

His office is monitoring an incident that happened in November involving a Northumberland County Muslim woman who was targeted by a man as she waited outside a store. The woman told police the man said "all terrorists should be shot" and pretended to shoot an automatic weapon. No update on the case has been reported.

The following map shows hate crime reporting for each state in the continental US. States are color-coded according to crimes reported in 2016 per 100,000 population. Mouse over (or tap) a state for more information.

Welbeck said he has met police chiefs who vigorously pursue hate crime claims, but he has also met scores of victims of hate crimes who say law enforcement turned a blind eye to their claims.

He said the nature of hate crimes coming out of rural areas across the state tend to be more flagrant and targeted compared to incidents that take place in more ethnically and racial diverse centers.

"There needs to be unilateral willingness and rigor for enforcing these laws," Welbeck said. "Pennsylvania is a hub for hate groups and we've seen the increase in hate crimes. There needs to be vigorous response to that."

Small steps



Exclusion from protection of the law for individuals with disabilities or members of the LGBT community has restricted the reach of the statute.

One of Pennsylvania's highest profile cases was the 2014 Philadelphia "gay bashing case" in which two gay men were brutally beaten by more than a dozen young people who initiated the attack with a barrage of anti-gay slurs.

Prosecutors were able to charge the 15 assailants with simple assault, aggravated assault, reckless endangerment and conspiracy, but they were not able to tack on the sentencing enhancement of ethnic intimidation.

More recently, Hogan, the Chester County district attorney, prosecuted a man who had mocked and punched a man with cerebral palsy. Hogan used a surveillance video that showed Barry Baker Jr. mocking the victim's disability before attacking him outside a 7-Eleven convenience store in West Chester.

Hogan was able to prosecute Baker on simple assault and related crimes, but not ethnic intimidation since the law provides no special protection to individuals with disabilities.

"In my humble opinion that person should be subject to the same enhancement that ethnic intimidation has to offer," Hogan said.

Efforts to expand the language of the statute have been in part stalled by arguments over the nuances of a person's identity.

"If somebody kills somebody because of their race, guess what, they are going to get prosecuted for murder," Hogan said. "I don't need extra bang."

Problems arise when the race or disability of a victim is not apparent, he explained.

"If you don't have something immediately obvious, it becomes a bit of guessing game and that's where you run into legislative issues," Hogan said. "Did they attack the person because they were gay or for some other reason? You run into sticky issues, which is why prosecutors like to stick to simple minority status."

In the Baker case, Hogan explained, the disability was arguably as apparent as an ethnic minority. Sectors of the law enforcement community have echoed that opinion, calling for a "simple fix" to the law. They say supporters of an expansion to the law "junk up" the legislative efforts with dozens of categories added to the bill, hampering any progress.

In spite of the woefully low reporting numbers, Pennsylvania has logged some wins under the ethnic intimidation statute.

Most recently, a state Superior Court upheld the conviction of a white Lancaster woman to a 6- to 16-year prison sentence for the racially motivated shooting in a grocery store parking lot.

Ashley Rose Curry is serving a 6- to 16-year prison sentence for a racially-motivated shooting in the parking lot of a Lancaster County grocery store.

Ashley Rose Curry used a racial slur while speaking to her victim, then kicked and spat at her. She also shot a bystander - who happened to black - in the stomach.

The Lancaster County District Attorney's office also recently successfully prosecuted a 59-year-old county man under the ethnic intimidation charge.

Robert Chenault pleaded guilty to a felony count of ethnic intimidation and related charges for the July 8 road rage incident last summer in which he threatened to shoot his victim, waving his fist in her face and yelling, "I'll shoot your brains out you [racial slur]."

In sentencing Chenault, President Judge Dennis Reinaker said "this kind of language is absolutely despicable."

Roger Chenault in February pleaded guilty to a felony count of ethnic intimidation and related charges for a July 8 incident in Washington Boro.

A spokesman for the Lancaster District Attorney's office said neither of the instances represented anomalies for the county.

"We do not feel we are filing this charge more here in comparison with other counties," said Brett Hambright. "In fact, this recent case [Chenault] and the 2015 incident involving Ashley Curry are the only two convictions on the [ethnic intimidation] charge we can recall off hand."

Lancaster County reported zero hate crimes to the FBI from 2014 to 2016.

Lu-in Wang, professor of law at University of Pittsburgh, noted that while communities might not want to be seen as havens for racism and bigotry, the irony is that higher numbers of hate crimes often correlate to a higher level of awareness.

"It's opposite of what the numbers would show," she said. "It's the same for sexual assault. The more attention you pay to it, the better the place it is for these things to be combated. But it still looks like one of the worst places."

Wang, who has written several books about hate crimes, said that society as a whole needs to counterbalance the propensity for some groups to glorify hate crimes.

"There is a certain kind of glory sometimes in committing a hate crime," Wang said. "The best illustration is anti-gay violence . . . sometimes groups of men will get together and gay bash. It's like a bonding experience. It's a way to show they belong. Similarly, racist crime is a way to get attention from your peers who agree . . . that this as a spectacular thing."

She adds: If communities do not crack down on hate crimes, they in turn normalize it.

Graphics by Nick Malawskey

FBI Hate Crime statistics, 2016 by PennLive on Scribd