NAACP president calls for resources to crack down on hate crimes

The president of the NAACP on Sunday called for more government resources to crack down on hate crimes and hate groups. 

Cornell Williams Brooks, the president of the civil rights group, also said the Confederate flag in South Carolina should come down following the killing of nine individuals at a historically black church in the state. 

{mosads}“When we think about the fact that in this country, there’s 784 hate groups, the level of hate crimes in this country has remained constant over years. We have to allocate resources to address these hate groups and these hate crimes,” Brooks said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

He said hate crimes are undercounted in the United States because they rely on self reporting. Brooks called for “vigorous prosecution and vigorous investigation of these hate groups, and the resources to do so.”

Dylann Roof, 21, was charged with nine counts of murder after allegedly opening fire in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., on Wednesday night. 

Though early indications are that he was not associated with any particular hate group, Roof used Nazi symbols and was pictured with the Confederate flag and others associated with apartheid South Africa. 

Brooks said the Confederate flag is an “anachronistic emblem of a bygone era at best.” The NAACP has boycotted South Carolina for years because of the flag. 

“It has to come down,” Brooks said. “It must come down.”