Just eight or so hours after Donald Trump gave his speech celebrating his victory as president-elect, Franklin police received a 911 call from Spring Street, where a man was reportedly threatening people with a firearm.
Officers arrived to find the outcome of a tense argument. The Nov. 9 incident report shows that a husband and wife had been passing doughnuts out along the street that morning and joined in on a group’s conversation about the election the night before.
When the couple – both of whom are black – learned that a woman in the group, who is white, voted for Trump, they reportedly became confrontational.
At one point, the report indicated that the husband pulled a pellet gun out of his car, and, while keeping it pointed at the ground, threatened to shoot the Trump supporter and another man, who is white.
Following an attempt to flee, police apprehended the husband and discussed the incident – he said he took out the gun because he was worried the other white man was going to attack his wife.
No charges were pressed in the end, and Franklin police did not classify it as a “bias” incident. It was one of several signs, however, of how post-election tensions are playing out in New Hampshire, from arguments in the street and the weekend’s loud anti-Trump rallies to quieter moments outside a school and at a restaurant.
The day after the election, SAU 48 Superintendent Mark Halloran said a student reported an incident at Plymouth Regional High School.
“Early in the morning, a student was walking into the building and thought they heard a racial slur directed at them,” Halloran said. The slur was thought to have come from a passing school bus, though he added that following an in-school investigation, none of the bus students seemed to know anything about it.
The SAU got in touch with the student’s mother and had an assembly at the end of the day.
“The principal talked about tolerance and, basically, pride in oneself and that Plymouth was a better place than that,” Halloran said.
A little north in the White Mountains, a restaurant has been the center of attention on social media after Toni DiPina, a black pastor from Worcester, Mass., posted Sunday that several white families came in after but were seated before her and her family. They decided to leave.
“I told those who witnessed this I was posting this on Facebook so they could see the new blatantly racist Trump world!” DiPina wrote.
Following many Facebook condemnations – and defenses – of the restaurant, additional posts on the subject appear to show that the issue was worked out between the restaurant owner and the family as a poorly handled misunderstanding.
“This was a horrible experience for me and my family but I believe it will not happen at this place again,” DiPina posted Monday.
Nationwide, hate crime reports “erupted,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which had more than 200 incidents from Nov. 8 to 11. They are most commonly at schools and of anti-black and anti-immigrant sentiment, though there have been anti-woman, anti-Muslim, anti-LGBT, anti-Asian, anti-disability and anti-Trump reports as well.
In New Hampshire, no hate crimes have been formally reported to the attorney general’s office in the week since the election.
Franklin police said Monday they had no reported bias incidents, and Concord police had none, either.
Reporting to authorities isn’t always an accurate portrayal of what happens. The Plymouth Police Department, for instance, hadn’t received a report about the alleged racial slur the day after it happened.
The Associated Press reported over the summer that New Hampshire lags behind the rest of the country when it comes to filing hate crime reports with the FBI. The AP found that, on average, 17 percent of the country’s city and county law enforcement agencies didn’t file a single hate crime report in six years.
In New Hampshire, though, 28 percent of its agencies didn’t file a hate crime report from 2009-14.
(Elodie Reed can be reached at 369-3306, ereed@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @elodie_reed.)