Hate Crimes Rose 15% in L.A. County Schools

The number of hate crimes reported at Los Angeles County schools jumped last year, a troubling exception to a general drop in such incidents, the county Commission on Human Relations said Tuesday.

The 15% increase in reported campus hate crimes--more than half of them racially motivated--is a source of concern because almost all come from police departments, indicating that school districts are failing to report the incidents when they happen.

“Our fear is there are a tremendous amount of hate crimes that go on in schools that are not reported,” said Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti at the commission’s Tuesday morning news conference.

Without a uniform method of tracking hate crimes countywide, the commission’s 19th annual report is necessarily anecdotal, and officials noted that some increases in reports may be due to increased awareness of the crimes rather than an increase in crimes themselves.

The report tallies criminal acts motivated by hatred, from a white woman hurling chemicals on a Latino man and calling him a “beaner” to a white man kidnapping a gay Latino, tying him up and burning him with cigarettes.

Despite state laws requiring schools to address racial tensions on their campuses, many county districts--especially smaller ones--lack such policies, officials said.

Only one of the perpetrators of the 46 school-based hate crimes reported last year was expelled from school, officials said. “There is a problem with schools taking action,” said Bill Ybarra of the county Office of Education.

The commission said it was startled that the reported hate crimes occurred in elementary, middle and high schools as well as on college campuses and ranged from vandalism to assault with a deadly weapon. But officials said they could not divine a reason for the increase.

“It was a number that was unexpected, and we think we need to look deeper,” said Ron Wakabayashi, commission executive director.

Most of the reports came from the Los Angeles Police Department, which Wakabayashi said has been aggressive in tracking hate crimes. That raises the prospect that other police agencies are failing to report school-based hate crimes.

Wakabayashi credited the Los Angeles Unified School District with the most comprehensive hate crimes reporting policy, but even that district reported only three incidents.

Assistant Supt. Dan Isaacs said the district next year will require students to undergo a 20-week class on racial sensitivity and will introduce additional classes the following year. He said he believes that increased sensitivity will lead to fuller reporting of hate crimes.

Countywide, reported hate crimes dropped 6.2% last year, with a significant plunge in racial incidents that Wakabayashi attributed to increased attention in troubled areas such as Hawaiian Gardens and Harbor Gateway.

Now, he said, the incidents appear randomly spread throughout the county, as Hernando Arauco experienced during a drive to work in El Segundo last year.

The 39-year-old engineer honked his horn at a reckless driver, who then rammed his car, leaped out and, yelling anti-Latino slurs, beat Arauco so badly that the Torrance resident required surgery.

“I find myself scarred for life, chasing ghosts in my own home,” Arauco said.

His assailant was arrested and eventually plea-bargained his case with the district attorney’s office, enabling him to avoid jail time, Arauco said. Prosecutors even failed to notify Arauco of a hearing where he could ask for financial restitution, he said.

Arauco sat next to Garcetti at the news conference, and watched as the district attorney spoke of his increased prosecution of hate crimes. Arauco said Garcetti told him that “he would look into” his case.

Carla Aranaga, head of the district attorney’s hate crimes unit, said that apparently no one referred the case to her division and that a review is being conducted to prevent other cases from “falling through the loops.”

Most hate crimes reported in the county were due to race--436. Sexual orientation sparked 220 crimes, and religion 102, mostly attacks against Jews.

Blacks, who represent 10% of the county’s population, made up 50% of all victims of reported racial hate crimes, compared to 21% for Latinos, 16.5% for whites and 7.5% for Asians. The number of Latino victims rose 18%, and the small number of Middle Eastern hate crime victims rose from one to four.

Reported hate crimes for sexual orientation remained about the same as last year, with an 18% increase in lesbian victims, which officials attributed to increased reporting.

“Most hate crimes are committed by juveniles,” said Garcetti, whose office has secured a $150,000 federal grant to counsel young perpetrators of hate crimes. “We can do something about that.”

Wakabayashi said that preventing hate crimes is difficult. “I wish we had one bullet that could take care of all these things, but it’s more complicated than that,” he said.

He said that particularly in schools, leaders must become better at dealing with lower-level tensions that can lead to headline-grabbing blowups.

“There is far more experience in dealing with the catastrophic events that the news media runs to,” he said, “than with the underlying elements.”

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Hate Crimes Fall

Reported hate crimes have been dropping in Los Angeles County for two years, according to a report by the county. The following are victims of reported hate crimes in Los Angeles County during 1998 and the change in those categories from the previous year. The numbers are tallies of reports to police or community groups of crimes motivated by prejudice.

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Percentage change Victim 1998 1997 from 1997 Black 219 273 --20 Gay man 173 181 --4 Latino 90 76 18 Jewish 86 100 --14 White 72 89 --19 Lesbian 45 38 18 Asian/Pacific 33 32 3 Middle Eastern 20 11 82

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Note: An individual can be counted in more than one category.

Source: Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations