AURORA | Saido Osman didn’t notice the middle-aged white man as she strolled into an Aurora Walgreen’s last year.

Her traditional hijab covering her head and her phone pinned to her ear, the now 42-year-old Somali immigrant at first didn’t hear what the man said, either.

But other shoppers did.

“They don’t sell stuff to make bombs here,” he shouted at her, according to police reports.

He also told Osman to “go home,” the reports say, and added, “Muslims are not welcome here.”

Osman eventually heard him, but thought he meant for her to go back to her apartment — not leave the country. Now she believes he meant something very different.

“He abused my religion,” she said last week. “He abused my culture. He abused the way I dress.”

Police later arrested Robert Gwizdalski, 51, on a bias-motivated harassment charge. Prosecutors dropped the charge in exchange for him taking an anger-management class last spring, and Gwizdalski claims he didn’t make the comments witnesses attribute to him. Instead, he said he was mad at Osman for bumping into his wife.

The case was one of more than three dozen bias-motivated crimes police have investigated in the past year. Bias motivated is the legal term police use for what’s commonly called “hate crimes.”

In 2016 alone, Aurora police saw 39 bias-motivated crimes — that’s triple the number from last year, when there 12, and six times more than 2014, when there were six. While the incidents spiked in November with seven reported crimes, there was at least one incident every month of the year — the first time in the past three years that happened.

A review of the cases that led to arrests or charges shows they generally involve strangers shouting insults and rarely result in significant legal repercussions.

Prosecutors say free speech concerns make it tough to bring a case to trial, even if they find the conduct repugnant.

Aurora police say in each case — whether it’s a rash of racist graffiti like last month in southeast Aurora or harassment like Osman’s — they take the crimes especially seriously.

“These kinds of situations not only evoke fear in the person who was specifically victimized and targeted, but it evokes fear within the community,” Aurora police Chief Nick Metz said during a press conference last month condemning the recent spate of crimes.

Since December 2015, law enforcement has made arrests or filed charges in a dozen bias-motivated crimes, according to police statistics. In all, they have responded to about 40 incidents in that time, including the cases last month where someone spray-painted “KKK” and a racial slur on apartment doors.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, there has been a major spike in reports of hate crimes — slurs scrawled on cars, verbal abuse of immigrants — as well as other hateful incidents since November’s election.

“It feels to us that, since the election, it would not be an overstatement to say it has been a deluge,” said Scott Levin, director of the ADL’s Mountain States Regional Office in Denver.

The group is sifting through many of those to determine if they rise to the level of a crime or if they are simply acts of hateful or insensitive behavior. Rarely, Levin said, does the ADL find that the incidents reported to them are hoaxes.

Jeremy Shaver, associate director of the ADL’s Denver office, said while the numbers since the election aren’t finalized, they have definitely seen a spike in recent years. He pointed to FBI data showing a 13 percent spike in Colorado hate crimes in 2015, the most recent year available, and a 7 percent spike nationally.

Levin said that with these sorts of crimes increasing, statements like those made last month by Metz and Aurora Mayor Steve Hogan are vital.

Hate crimes are often about sending a message to a broader community that they aren’t welcome, Levin said. And when leaders publicly say the exact opposite — that everyone is welcome in a place like Aurora — they can help blunt that message, he added.

The Aurora Sentinel reviewed nine of the 12 cases where police either made an arrest or filed charges since December 2015. The other three incidents involved juveniles and police declined to release the reports.

In the Aurora cases where police made an arrest or filed charges, none from the past year have resulted in a jail sentence — at least not yet.

Four, including Gwizdalski, entered into agreements with prosecutors. One was ordered to pay a fine, another to take a sensitivity class and another probation.

Five others have charges pending, including two facing felony charges.

In Osman’s case, prosecutors dismissed the case against Gwizdalski because they worried it would get thrown out on grounds of free speech, said Arapahoe County Chief Deputy District Attorney Brian Sugioka.

“We really came up against the fact that the First Amendment provides a lot of protections for people to say offensive things,” he said.

Prosecutors would have had to prove not just that Gwizdalski made Osman feel threatened, but that his intent was to threaten her, which could be a difficult hurdle.

Still, prosecutors felt the anger management class was an appropriate compromise.

“In this particular case, when we looked at the actual conduct, everyone in the office agreed this is offensive, this person has a problem,” he said.

Gwizdalski said he was upset with Osman because she was looking at her phone and bumped into his wife.

The police reports, which include details on Gwizdalski’s initial interview with police after they tracked him to his home, don’t include any mention of Osman bumping his wife. Gwizdalski insists that’s what he said to the officers. He also said he never made any comments about buying “bomb-making supplies” and only mentioned Osman’s race after a store manager told him to leave. Gwizdalski, who said he served in the Marine Corps, was upset because other customers assumed he was angry at Osman because she is Muslim.

“I yelled out, ‘A U.S. Marine can’t shop here but a Muslim can?’” he said.

Gwizdalski said he isn’t racist and was angry about the recent spate of graffiti, too. Those cases are clear racism, he said, while his was largely a misunderstanding.

“That’s unacceptable,” he said of the graffiti cases. “But all this … was a lady that was actually argumentative to me.”

Osman said she is disappointed with the light punishment Gwizdalski received. Because of it, she said she wouldn’t recommend people in a similar situation contact police. 

“I reported, we called the police, we went to the court and nothing happened,” she said. “It’s not worth reporting.”

In the days after the incident, she stayed home from work because she was scared, and now she regularly worries about something similar happening.

“From that day, I always be careful,” she said.

HATE CRIMES IN 2016

Here’s a look at some other recent bias-motivated Aurora crimes:

Lawrence Brown, 63, sentenced to probation after he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for using a gun while drunk. According to police reports, Brown who is white, brandished a gun and called his neighbors, who are black, the “N-word.” The incident happened in late January in the 19000 block of East Dartmouth Avenue.

Joseph Jay Marquez, 39, ordered to pay a $250 fine and about $90 in court costs after he pleaded guilty to using obscene language to a neighbor. In that incident, police say Marquez, who is white, called his neighbor a racial slur and flicked a cigarette at them in July at an apartment complex in the 149000 block of East Hampden Avenue.

Anthony Dwayne Elliott, 25, pleaded guilty in May to a bias-motivated crime and sentenced to 24 hours of community service and ordered to take a racial sensitivity class. In police reports, witnesses say a drunk Elliott went on a racist tirade while riding an RTD bus on East Colfax Avenue in January. He called a Somali passenger a terrorist, a black passenger the N-word and used other slurs toward Asian passengers, witnesses said, before fighting with a group of black passengers.

Seth Harris, 30, is accused of threatening an apartment maintenance man and calling him the N-word. Police said Harris is white and the victim is black. An arrest warrant was issued for Harris in September, but he hasn’t been arrested.

Douglas Gerlach, 53, was charged with using abusive language after police say he called a black clerk at an Aurora store the N-word. Gerlach, who is white, is due in court next month.

Jamal El-Masri, 32, was charged with a bias-motivated crime and felony witness intimidation after police say he called his neighbors, who are black, the N-word because he believed they were witnesses against him in another case. He is due in Adams County court next month. State records list El-Masri as white, and on Facebook he claims to be a practicing Muslim.

Chad Barrett, 34, was charged with a misdemeanor for using abusive and obscene language after police say he sent offensive text messages, including the N-word, to a black teen. Barrett, who is white, is scheduled for a jury trial in Aurora Municipal Court next month.

Lawrence Raibon, 33, was charged with bias-motivated assault and other crimes after police say he attacked a relative, who is gay, outside an Aurora department store. He is due in court Dec. 22.