WISN: Sikh Temple Shooting Prompts FBI Policy Change

Ten months after the Oak Creek Sikh temple shooting, an FBI panel voted to start tracking hate crimes against Sikhs, Hindus and Arabs, as Patch's media partners at WISN 12 news report. 

The national Sikh Coalition has pushed for the change for more than two years. It gained momentum following the Aug. 5, 2012 shooting in Oak Creek, in which a gunman with white supremacist ties killed six temple members. 

The new changes are expected to be implemented by 2015, according to a Sikh Coalition news release. Hate crimes are tracked against many other religious and racial groups.

Harpreet Saini, whose mother was killed in the attack, said in the news release the FBI's vote "is a step in the right direction to ensure that no one else will have to suffer what my brother and I suffered after losing our mother to a hate crime last August." 

Saini testified in a U.S. Senate hearing last September, asking the FBI to give his mother "the dignity of being a statistic."