Before Nazi salute picture, Baraboo schools saw a rise in racial complaints

BARABOO - The Baraboo school district reported a steep increase in racial harassment complaints two years before a picture of local high school students giving a Nazi salute drew global outcry, USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin has learned.

Students filed 12 harassment complaints with the Baraboo district during the 2016-2017 school year, 11 of which were based on the victims' race. The district logged just five harassment complaints in the prior two school years combined.

Experts say this is part of a statewide and national trend of increasing racial tension. Whether intended as a joke or done with malicious intent, previously taboo behavior has become increasingly public.

"People have talked about an emboldening of hatred, and I think that’s what we’re seeing," said Elana Kahn, director of community relations for the Milwaukee Jewish Federation. "People are feeling free; I call it sort of taking the hood off."

Hate crimes jumped by nearly 17 percent nationwide in 2017, according to data reported by local police departments to the FBI.

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Though the FBI data — like all attempts to quantify hate crimes and ideology — significantly understates the reality, it reflects a trend that has grown in recent years, according to a University of Wisconsin-Whitewater professor.

"People are feeling ... they can express these kinds of beliefs and engage in these kinds of actions where before they probably would have felt like there was a certain amount of stigma or consequence that came with those actions," said Sanislav Vysotsky, assistant professor of sociology and criminology.

District won't detail harassment complaints

The topic of hate and discrimination in Wisconsin came to the forefront last week as a photo from the Sauk County community of Baraboo went viral.

The photo, taken in May, shows a group of high school boys doing what appears to be the Nazi raised-hand salute before the spring junior prom.

Baraboo School District records show it wasn't the only red flag in recent years.

The district logged two complaints of racial harassment or discrimination in 2014-15, and one in 2015-16. That jumped to 11 complaints of racial harassment in 2016-17.

Students also reported harassment based on sexual orientation twice in 2014-15 and once in 2016-17.

The reports obtained by USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin under state public records law show each harassment complaint was resolved informally but provide no other information. A records request for the complaints and details of the district response is pending.

Baraboo schools chief Lori Mueller declined Thursday to shed more light on the complaints or how the district responded, saying the information was protected under student privacy.

"We take all complaints very seriously," she said.

Mueller said she wasn't certain how many student harassment or discrimination complaints had been logged during the 2017-2018 school year because those numbers are still being compiled by district staff.

Mueller publicly apologized last week after the prom picture spread across social media. Government authorities, veterans and Holocaust survivor organizations have widely condemned the picture while the photographer who took it claims the teens were asked to wave goodbye to their parents before going to prom.

Growth of hate hard to track

Incidents like the Baraboo photo raise the question of how prevalent hate is in Wisconsin.

Other headlines have done the same, as in March when police found white supremacist literature along with bomb-making instructions after 28-year-old Benjamin D. Morrow died in an explosion caused by chemicals in his Beaver Dam apartment.

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Answers are hard to come by.

The Southern Poverty Law Center tracks what it identifies as "hate groups," and it shows 11 active in Wisconsin. They include four groups labeled as neo-Nazi, three as black nationalist and others that are anti-Muslim or anti-LGBT. The center's definition of a hate group is not universally accepted, however.

Such groups typically stay under the radar here, as Wisconsin hasn’t had a significant public hate rally since 2011, when a neo-Nazi rally in West Allis drew just 30 white supremacists and about 2,000 counter-protesters.

Several organizations attempt to count hate crimes or hate-fueled incidents, but their numbers vary wildly and capture only a small portion of what actually happens, experts say. For example, the FBI reported 7,321 hate crimes in 2017 across the country, but the National Crime Victimization Survey from the U.S. Department of Justice estimates there are 250,000 hate crimes annually in the U.S.

Some examples:

Wisconsin court records show additional hate-crime penalties were attached to 236 criminal cases from 2005 to 2017, 136 of them felonies. But prosecutors vary widely in how often they choose to use the hate enhancers, so the count is far from exhaustive. Milwaukee County accounted for only six of those enhancers since 2005, less than tiny Rusk County.

FBI hate crime data is the most frequently cited, but it is deeply flawed because the reporting isn't mandatory. Only 24 of Wisconsin's 437 law enforcement agencies reported hate crime data in 2017. Those agencies reported 46 incidents, about one-third each related to race, religion and sexual orientation. Green Bay did not report any hate crimes, although a man was charged with a hate crime enhancer in October 2017 for yelling a racial slur before firing his gun at a man.

The Anti-Defamation League tracks reports of anti-Semitic harassment and vandalism or white supremacist propaganda. It has recorded 34 such incidents since January 2017. They include flyers posted in a supermarket condemning Jews, swastikas painted in public spaces, social media statements and bomb threats to a Milwaukee Jewish community center.

The Milwaukee Jewish Federation gathers reports of harassment and threats from around the state, although primarily Milwaukee. The foundation was told of no harassment or threats in 2015, six incidents in 2016 and 15 in 2017.

Kahn, of the Jewish Federation, said the lack of comprehensive data is "frustrating," but unavoidable given many victims' hesitance to report. Vysotsky said numbers are also limited by lack of training for police and other officials, who don't always properly identify crimes as motivated by hate or bias.

But the numbers that are available make it clear to hate-crime observers the problem is widespread — whether it crops up in violent attacks or what some regard as flippant remarks or actions.

"I think what we saw in Baraboo validates that it’s not just about legality and hate crimes, it is about how the culture is in a community, I think it’s about the quality of education and about the permissiveness of hateful speech," Kahn said.