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(WABNEWS Spanish) — At least 786 people reported having been victims of hate crimes in Los Angeles County in 2021, an increase of 23% over the previous year, according to a report Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations (LACCHR). This is the highest number recorded since 2002.
Hate crimes, as defined by the US Department of Justice, are motivated crimes due to prejudices The entity clarifies that “hate” does not mean anger or disgust, but prejudice against people with specific characteristics such as race, origin, gender, sexual orientation, religion or disability.
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While the “crime” part is usually violent, such as an assault or murder. Damage to property, threats to commit the crime, or even conspiracy to commit the crime also qualify as a crime.
In the specific case of California, a person can file hate crime charges when there is evidence that actual bias, hatred, or prejudice based on race/ethnicity, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, gender, or sexual orientation or perceived from the victim were a substantial factor in committing the crime.
The majority of hate crimes in Los Angeles County occurred in the Services Planning Metro (SPA) region, which stretches from West Hollywood to Boyle Heights, followed by the San Valley region. Fernando.
Racial hate crimes on the rise
The report showed that 74% of hate crimes were violent in nature, reaching their highest level in 20 years, while the motivations behind the attacks varied. However, racial crimes registered the largest increase.
In 2020, racial hate crimes in Los Angeles County skyrocketed 54% (from 263 to 406), the largest increase since 2003. And in 2021, they increased by 17% constituting 58% of all hate crimes. hate denounced.
According to the LACCHR, black people are the most frequent target of racially motivated hate crimes, despite the fact that they only represent 9% of the population of Los Angeles County. The black community was disproportionately targeted and made up 46% of the victims of racial hate crimes.
And while the hardest hit community is black, Latinos were the group most likely to suffer racially motivated violent crimes.
According to figures from the LACCHR, attacks against the Latino community increased by 10% and 78% of the crimes used specifically anti-Mexican slurs. “Major cities such as Los Angeles, Houston, Denver, and Philadelphia have documented significant declines in the number of crimes reported by Latino victims since the beginning of the Trump presidency,” the report states.
However, this number could be higher as Latino victims may not be reporting attacks to authorities for fear of being detected by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The LACCHR report indicates that 74% of hate crimes against Latinos in Los Angeles County were committed by African-Americans, followed by whites (23%) and Latinos (12%).
In the case of the Latino-on-Latino hate crimes, many of the suspects used insults against immigrants, a community that reached an all-time high in reported hate crimes.
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For its part, hate crimes against the Asian community reached its highest number in at least 20 years, with 77 cases as of the end of 2021. Stop AAPI Hate is a coalition that began tracking racism and discrimination against Americans from Asian origin since March 2020, since they began to be verbally and physically assaulted because they began to be wrongly blamed for the covid-19 pandemic. In a quarter of reported hate crimes in Los Angeles County, victims were blamed for the pandemic.
The most recent report de Stop AAPI Hate indicates that California is the state with the highest number of reported hate incidents as of December 2021, while the majority of incidents, around 63.7%, were cases of verbal harassment.
Maria Morava and Saba Hamedy contributed to this report.
