‘United Against Hate’: Myrtle Beach hosts community discussion about hate crimes

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (WBTW) — The City of Myrtle Beach hosted a community discussion about hate crimes Monday evening.

Officials from the United States Attorney’s Office, the FBI, and local law enforcement led the conversation.

The event “United Against Hate” focused on how to identify a hate crime or incident, report it and, ways to prevent it.

“There’s a federal hate crimes law that we can and do enforce and really encourage people to report,” Adair Boroughs, the U.S. Attorney for the District of South Carolina said.

Community members from across Myrtle Beach came out to talk about what a hate crime looks like and how it’s effected the community.

In November, two people allegedly burned a cross towards their black neighbor’s home in Horry County.

Since then, communities like Myrtle Beach and Conway began working towards adopting a hate crime ordinance.

Boroughs said even though there’s not a state law, there are federal ways to enforce and prevent hate crimes.

“The feds, the FBI can feel like this scary thing and we’re just people, we’re South Carolinians really trying to enforce federal law here,” Boroughs said.

In 2022, the FBI said South Carolina had 60 total reported hate crimes. 63% of those were related to race and ethnicity. They added hate crimes are not reported enough.

Ryan Thompson attended the event and believes discussions like this are important.

“Being one of two states without a state law, I thought it was really important to come here, hear what resources were going to be here and juts kind of see what’s going on in the community,” Thompson said.

Thompson spoke about his reaction to the victims of the recent cross burning incident attending the event and describing their experience.

“And then to have the victims of the cross-burning be here, I think was just very emotional and very touching for everyone to see the actual victims of what’s going on here and just what do we do to go forward, so this doesn’t happen again,” Thompson said.

Boroughs encourages anyone who sees or experiences a hate crime to report it to local law enforcement or the FBI.

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Adrianna Lawrence is a multimedia journalist at News13. Adrianna is originally from Virginia Beach, Virginia, and joined the News13 team in June 2023 after graduating from Virginia Commonwealth University in May 2023. Keep up with Adrianna on Instagram, Facebook, and X, formerly Twitter. You can also read more of her work, here.

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