By Dianne Anderson

Advocates and experts came together last week for strategies around rising hate crime, and the need to increase local awareness of the importance of calling and reporting incidents through 211 LA County, or www.lavshate.org.

In the quarterly meeting of Los Angeles County’s Network Against Hate Crime, Robin Toma noted the 2022 Hate Crime Report showing hate spiked 18% over 2021, representing the second-highest increase in over two decades.

Toma also said there was an uptick in those reporting hate crimes since the 211 LA hotline launched in 2020, with evaluation partners now exceeding 60 per month.

“I know through an anecdotal basis, I ask communities how many have heard of lavshate.org, and the number of people raising their hands has been increasing. In the beginning, so few people knew about it. I’m seeing that has changed, but we have a long way to go,” said Toma, executive director of the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations.

Brian Levin stressed the need for victims of hate in LA County to call 211, or those outside LA County see  www.cavshate.org <https://www.cavshate.org/>  or call 18338NoHate.

He said that’s especially helpful for those who do not want to report calls directly to police.

For the Black community, which has faced historic police harassment and use of excessive force, he said there is a reluctance to call police to report hate crimes.

“Look at polls, 55% of African Americans have trepidation with reporting to call the police,” said Levin, retired director and founder of Cal State San Bernardino University’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.

Levin, appointed by Gov. Newsom last year to the Commission on the State of Hate, addressed hate trends that increased 7% since 2022. He cited a 10% increase across 42 cities, and a 22% increase in the top ten of the more densely populated cities, while states are seeing about a 16% increase.

“The bottom line is that it hit a record last year for 2022 for overall hate crime [with] FBI going back to national data collection started in 1991,” said Levin, a civil rights attorney and retired professor from Cal State University San Bernardino.

In Los Angeles, anti-Latino hate rose to third place, followed by anti-Jewish hate. For the first time, he said that Jews also experienced a record increase in the top 10 cities.

“Remember that Latinos are the plurality in California, regional and local demographics affect things, but anti-Black remains the most targeted group in California and across the country,” he said.

In contrast to higher hate crime trends, Levin said the sheriff’s departments have vastly lower reporting while FBI county statistics for 2022 only showed 27 reported hate crimes.

“So that’s [within] five to six million people. There’s a big disparity,” he said. “Remember, the density is different, L.A. County is twice the size of Delaware. Nevertheless, it’s still a cause of concern, apparent possible under-reporting coming out of various parts of the county.”

Last fall, he cited a 197% increase in crimes and noncriminal incidents against Jews, anti-Palistinian, anti-Arab, anti-Muslim hate increased significantly, paralleling hate invective seen online in Google trends, with calls to eliminate or kill specific targeted groups.

One political invective, meaning abusive language, translates into more violent incidents on the streets. He said it’s not unusual for hate crimes to merge with hate invective online at elections.

“Every election year that we have data for, the national data has been increased and those increases have been significantly higher than what we see in non-election years, which tends to be flat or slightly up,” he said.

Places like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago saw big upticks in anti-Jewish religious hate crimes, but he noted there are “reporting deserts” regarding anti-Muslim and anti-Arab hate. Campus hate crimes increased in the past four years, but have received reports from across the spectrum.

Levin called out to community groups and people at all levels of government, and said all hands on deck are needed in the work against hate.

On the question of hate crime reporting for Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, he said the Los Angeles and Orange County Human Relations Commission have done the best job at collecting hate crime data.

“We’re looking at counties where we’re finding vast reporting deserts even here in some of the more rural counties. Also, the Sheriff’s departments might want to consider putting a hate crime coordinator,” he said, noting that the Attorney General’s report has county by county data.

Over the decades, Ron Wakabyashi has led several community and social service organizations, and spoke of his time on the city Human Relations Commission under Mayor Tom Bradly, who moved the HRC to the cluster of public safety after the 1992 civil unrest.

At the time, he said different organizations, including NAACP, MALDEF, and Asian American Legal Defense issued a report about the impact to communities.

“What was a police-focused event on day one was a Black-Korean event by day three, but the report talked about the need for human relations or conflict resolution infrastructure. I want to underscore that because we’ve come so far in Los Angeles,” said Wakabyashi, former DOJ Regional Director of Community Relations Service.

He commended Toma and said 211 LA represents a breakthrough in several areas related to police and the legal community regarding how hate crime is handled.

“If folks can recognize many hate incidents start as a controversy around a hate incident that turns into a police community conflict because the community thinks that police have not responded appropriately or thoughtfully — 211 helps build that bridge,” he said.

Since retiring from DOJ, he is involved with the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, which developed its recent guide on how campuses can interface with law enforcement.

“Many law enforcement agencies are still in a mode where when they look at protest and large crowd events, they’re looking at public safety and crowd control versus looking at crowd management. What are other ways that help that make that First Amendment exercise not deteriorate?” he said.

He invites everyone to check out the Divided Community Project at the Moritz School of Law, which helped with a guidebook around HR 40, a bill supported by President Biden that spurred 30 municipal truth and reconciliation commissions across country.

Levin ended the meeting by emphasizing the need for victims to report hate crimes and incidents. He also called for human relations and the faith-based community, which has seen an uptick in hate, to respond and get involved.

“We have to care for each other, no matter what your darn title is,” he said. “It is key that we continue this work because there is a cadre of folks who are exploiting division, and we have to know that peace starts here.”

For more resources:

https://211la.org/la-vs-hate

To report a hate crime in LA, see  https://www.lavshate.org/report-hate

The Attorney General’s Report:  https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/Hate%20Crime%20In%20CA%202022f.pdf

For the Orange County Hate Crime Report, see  https://wearegroundswell.org/hate-crime-report/

Moritz Divided Community Project at

https://moritzlaw.osu.edu/faculty-and-research/divided-community-project/virtual-toolkit

The California Association of Human Relation Organizations, see  http://www.calhro.org/network/

To learn more about the Commission on the State of Hate,

see  https://calcivilrights.ca.gov/commission-on-the-state-of-hate/

To work to address hate crime, contact Brian Levin,  at blevin8@oal.com <mailto:blevin8@oal.com>