Is this a subject verb agreement error?

Question

My English teacher says that the following is an "agreement" (which I assume means subject-verb agreement) error. He underlined the bolded parts of the sentence.

According to Political Research Associates, who used data gathered by
  the FBI, recorded hate crimes against Muslims increased by almost
  1800% from 2000 to 2001 (Political Research Associates).

I've studied stuff online on subject verb agreements and cant find why this is an error. Could anyone help and maybe suggest a better sentence if this is wrong?

SigueSigueBen · Accepted Answer

I think the teacher thought there was an error because the sentence appears to have no subject.

Stripping out the unimportant parts, here is your sentence:

According to Political Research Associates, recorded hate crimes increased.

You can see that the sentence has a prepositional phrase According to PRA but no subject for the verb recorded -- except that recorded isn't actually the verb, it is part of the actual subject recorded hate crimes for the verb increased.

DBlomgren · Answer

I see an error right away. To review:

According to Political Research Associates, who used data gathered by the FBI, recorded hate crimes against Muslims increased by almost 1800% from 2000 to 2001 (Political Research Associates).

Political Research Associates is a company or organization and not a person or persons, so the relative pronoun "who" does not "agree" with what it refers to. The sentence should be:

According to Political Research Associates, which used data gathered by the FBI, recorded hate crimes against Muslims increased by almost 1800% from 2000 to 2001 (Political Research Associates).

(If anyone wants to quibble and say that the company is made up of people and therefore "who" is correct, I'll just shake my head - and maybe suggest Googling hits for "company who" versus "company that" and "company which".)

Is this a subject verb agreement error?

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