‘It is unacceptable’: L.A. County hate crimes reached an all-time high last year

A man in San Pedro shouted a racial slur and chucked a glass bottle at a Black bus driver on her break. A trans woman getting off the Metro in Koreatown was told she belonged in hell. A father on his way to a Tarzana synagogue was interrupted by a man threatening to “kill all of you Jews.”

The grim encounters were among the record-breaking number of hate crimes reported across L.A. County last year, an increase fueled by an onslaught of harassment directed at Jewish, Black and LGBTQ+ people, according to a county report released Wednesday.

The report from the county’s Commission on Human Relations found 1,350 reported hate crimes — up 45% from the year before. It’s the highest level since the commission began counting in 1980.

“I will tell you, I was shocked to learn that,” said Robin Toma, the commission’s executive director, at a news conference Wednesday announcing the findings.

Toma called the figure “historic,” and said it was potentially a result of better outreach by the commission and rising levels of vitriol directed at the county’s minorities.

Hate crimes across the county have been trending up since 2014, but the commission’s tally of more than 1,300 incidents last year marked a significant jump. In 2022, 930 incidents were recorded.

The previous high was 1,031 reported hate crimes in 2001, the year of the Sept. 11 attacks.

“It is unacceptable,” Sheriff Robert Luna said of the latest numbers. “I promise you as the sheriff of this county that we are going to respond.”

Nathan Hochman, who was elected district attorney last month after campaigning on improving public safety, rebuked his predecessor, George Gascón, saying he’d failed to prosecute hate crimes. Hochman pledged to “send an increasingly clear message to the hate criminals.”

“I don’t see prosecution here,” he said. “I don’t see consequences.”

Jewish and transgender people saw some of the most significant increases. The report counted 99 anti-transgender hate crimes — a 125% jump. Nearly all were violent.

The incidents included an assault against a trans woman by two men who called her a slur as she was carrying her groceries in South Los Angeles, and a physical attack on a trans woman in Koreatown.

“This is obviously unacceptable,” said Bamby Salcedo, a transgender activist whose organization, TransLatin@ Coalition, received multiple bomb threats earlier this year.

Hate crimes against Jewish people nearly doubled, to 242 incidents. Many were cases of vandalism, such as swastika graffiti. The county has seen a number of Jewish-owned businesses vandalized since the eruption of the Israel-Hamas war 14 months ago.

Anti-Muslim crimes increased from seven to 19, according to the report. The authors also noted that 5% of all hate crimes involved “language regarding conflict in the Middle East.”

Brian Levin, founder of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism and a member of the California Commission on the State of Hate, said the findings match up with what he saw in big cities across America last year, all of which saw jumps in hate crimes against Jewish people, Muslims, Latinos and LGBTQ+ people.

For the first time, Levin said, Jewish people had become “the most targeted group” in several U.S. cities.

He said the new data provided by the commission could force the state to change findings released this summer that hate crimes in California had decreased by 7.1% in 2023 from 2022 levels.

The state had used incomplete data from the Los Angeles Police Department, Levin said, noting that the new county report includes nearly 700 more hate crimes than the attorney general’s report took into account.

With the new incidents factored in, Levin said, overall hate crime in California didn’t drop, but instead increased by about 25%.

“I’ve been waiting months for this to happen,” said Levin. “The headlines were all ‘7.1% decrease’ — I said ‘No, no, no.’”

The attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

There were small silver linings buried in the findings. Speakers at Wednesday’s news conference said the increase in hate crimes was probably due in part to a county campaign to encourage people to report such incidents. And a smaller portion of the hate crimes was violent — 65% compared with 72% in 2022.

All five county supervisors denounced the overall increase. Supervisor Hilda Solis, who helped create the reporting campaign, called the data “a sobering wake-up.”

“I’m not proud of the metro center I represent, where many of these crimes have centered,” Solis said at the news conference, noting that the region will be flooded with visitors from across the globe during the fast-approaching 2028 Olympics.

The county’s metro area, which stretches from West Hollywood to Boyle Heights, had the most reported hate crimes, followed by the San Fernando Valley, according to the report. Many of the crimes took place in schools — about a tenth of the total — or on public transit.

Nearly half of the total hate crimes were racial, with Black people disproportionately targeted. Despite making up about 9% of the county’s population, they were the targets of half of the racial hate crimes reported. There were 320 crimes against Black people — a new high and an 8% increase from 2022.

Holly Mitchell, the only Black woman on the Board of Supervisors, said that she was discouraged by the report, and that she experiences a “microaggression every single day.”

“I am deeply concerned that the next report will be even worse,” she said. “We know the polarization of all things related to ‘wokeness’ or ‘DEI’ is front and center in our national discussion,” she said, referring to programs encouraging diversity, equity and inclusion.

Hate crimes against Latino people increased by 19% to 144 — another new high. After a dip in 2022, anti-Asian crimes rose again, with 80 victims targeted — the second-highest number on record.