Number of Hate Crimes Up Sharply in County : Violence: Incidents occurred at rate of 9.7 per month, up from 7.6 crimes monthly the previous year.

In the last year, hate crimes in San Diego County increased at twice the rate of violent crime, authorities said Tuesday.

Jerry Chagala, executive director of the San Diego County Human Relations Commission, said the number of hate crimes increased by 28% during the reporting period between September, 1990, and August, 1991. By contrast, violent crime increased by 14% during the same period.

However, he said there was no single reason for the dramatic increase in crimes stemming from bigotry and prejudice. Statistics released by the commission include both physical assaults and simple but damning epithets directed at the victims.

“Many of these (crime) figures reflect what’s going on in the world at the time. In addition, there’s obviously a great deal of anger and misunderstanding between various groups in the community. The riots in Los Angeles showed that. In some cases the cause of the misunderstanding is racial, in other cases economic,” Chagala said.

Although the most common targets of hate crimes are blacks, gays and lesbians, Chagala said the number of assaults against whites more than tripled last year. The commission said 16 whites were assaulted because of their race during the recent reporting period, against only five the previous year.

Twenty of the victims assaulted because of their skin color during the same period were black, the commission said.

According to a report released by the commission Tuesday, the number of hate crimes reported last year averaged 9.7 per month. This compared to 7.6 hate crimes per month catalogued in the commission’s first report last year.

The figures released by the commission were broken down in the following categories.

* Attacks against gays and lesbians, 48.

* Assaults prompted by the victim’s religion, 12.

* Victims attacked because of their race (includes blacks, whites and other), 45.

* Victims attacked because of their ethnicity, nine. Eight of these victims were of Middle Eastern descent who were assaulted during the Persian Gulf War.

According to Chagala, the commission dismissed half of the crimes reported to them as hate crimes because they could not be substantiated.

“The majority of the reported crimes came from San Diego police and the gay and lesbian community,” Chagala said. “ . . . But police agencies throughout the county are taking all of this very seriously. Four years ago, law enforcement agencies were not heavily involved in reporting and investigating hate crimes.

“They have done a remarkable change-about. Now they incorporate hate crime training at the police academy and do in-house training sessions.