2,626 Were Victims of Hate Crimes in State Last Year

More than 2,600 Californians were the victims of hate crimes in 1995, the first full year in which statewide statistics were tracked, Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren said Wednesday.

Lungren told a meeting of the Bay Area Hate Crimes Investigators’ Assn. in Oakland that there were 1,754 incidents reported in 1995, with 2,626 victims.

There were 672 hate crimes reported in the latter half of 1994, when the state first began keeping records.

The vast majority--more than 69%--of the reported incidents in 1995 were related to the victims’ race or ethnicity. About 18% were related to sexual orientation, and about 12.5% were related to religion, Lungren said.

“African Americans were the most frequent victims of hate crimes based on race, comprising 48.8% of race-based hate crime victims,” Lungren said. About 14% of the victims were white, while about 11% were Latino and a similar percentage were Asian.

Many of the crimes were violent. Nearly 39% were intimidations; 34% were assaults; about 5% were robberies. There were three hate-related murders and two hate-related rapes, Lungren said.

“Acts of violence are always sickening. Hate crimes are among the most troubling, however, because they are rooted in intolerance and ignorance,” he said.