While the number of reported hate crimes dipped slightly in 2018, violence against individuals rose to a 16-year high, according to numbers released Tuesday by the FBI.

The main concern for extremism trackers, however, is the rising level of violence — the report showed an increase in the number of "crimes against persons," such as intimidation, assault and homicide.

"We're seeing a leaner and meaner type of hate crime going on," said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University San Bernardino. "Homicides were up and crimes against persons were up and that's an important thing to look at."

Levin said the increase in assaults was almost evenly distributed across demographic groups, with African-Americans, Jews, whites, gays and Latinos targeted the most. As in previous years, the majority of hate crimes reported in 2018 were motivated by bias against race and ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation.

Other notable findings include:

  • In hate crimes fueled by racism, African Americans continue to be the most frequently targeted, though anti-black incidents overall fell to a record low share of all hate crime in 2018.
  • Anti-Muslim incidents decreased for the second year in a row, but still make up nearly 15% of religiously motivated acts.
  • Anti-Semitic homicides in the U.S. reached their highest level ever as a result of the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh that killed 11 people in October 2018.
  • Latinos continued to experience an increase in racially motivated incidents. Levin, the researcher, said such incidents rose 13% over one year and 48% over five years.
  • The LGBTQ community also faced bias-motivated attacks in 2018. Incidents targeting gay males increased by nearly 7%, and anti-transgender hate crimes rose nearly 34%.
  • Anti-Latino, anti-gay, anti-Asian, anti-disability, anti-transgender, anti-Sikh and anti-white hate crimes increased in 2018.

Read the full article about trends in hate crimes by Rachel Treisman at NPR.