I got into an argument with someone over United States FBI Hate Crime statistics. The person I was arguing against said that a certain person in a prominent political position in my country is responsible for the increase in hate crimes.

I pointed out that there were over 1,000 additional agencies contributing information to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program at the time. So each new agency would only need to report one hate crime to explain the entire rise.

The person asked if the evidence of this increase was directly correlated to the amount of reports to the FBI, to which I said that if all of the agencies that contributed to the FBI previously are still contributing with over a thousand new agencies, then yes it will obviously increase if they all contribute.

The person then tried arguing that an increase in agencies sending information to the FBI doesn’t necessarily mean that more hate crimes are being reported, and that different agencies can end up sending the same information to the FBI.

At this point I said: What the fuck? For what reason would duplicate information be included and not added on to other existing information? For what possible reason would there be to include the same offender twice?

This person then ended the conversation by saying that the burden of proof was on me and that I have to prove that these thousands of organizations reporting to the FBI are somehow connected and making sure not to send duplicate information to the FBI.

So am I right or is this person right?