Recognizing the Danger of Nonviolent Hate Crimes

Parishioners of a Korean church in Cypress find swastikas painted on the windows and walls of their sanctuary.

A woman suffering from cerebral palsy receives death threats after asking for a handicapped parking spot in her Lake Forest apartment complex.

A Japanese community center in Norwalk is ransacked repeatedly by vandals who leave hate messages such as “Go back to Asia.”

No one was killed or injured in these acts of hate. But these day-to-day acts of vandalism and harassment represent the most common form of hate crime--and the type authorities have the most trouble solving. Of the 92 nonviolent hate crimes reported in Orange County last year, for example, prosecutors filed charges in only five cases and won convictions in two.

But there is a growing recognition by both law enforcement officials and hate crime experts that authorities need to become more aggressive in investigating nonviolent incidents, believing that perpetrators often go on to commit more serious acts of hate.

In one major step, the state has just revamped its police hate crime training curriculum, instructing officers to be more thorough when investigating vandalism cases for signs that bigotry or hate groups were involved. The training, required for all officers in the state, is aimed at addressing criticism that some police probes are too cursory and don’t conclusively determine whether the incidents were motivated by hate.

A bill now pending in the California Legislature would create two state commissions to study hate groups. One goal of the bill’s author, Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles), is to link vandalism and intimidation cases with bigger hate crimes to better understand assailants. Another bill would provide more money for hate crime prosecutions.

Unsolved Crimes Leave Sense of Isolation

The moves are welcomed by those who say they often feel like forgotten victims. Because most nonviolent hate crimes remain unsolved and receive little publicity, victims lack both the emotional closure of an arrest and the community support that often comes with bigger incidents.

“The higher-profile crimes have the effect of galvanizing the greater community, but smaller incidents increase the sense of isolation for many of the victims,” said Steve Chang, executive director of the Asian Pacific American Dispute Resolution Center in Los Angeles. “The fact that the crimes are very seldom solved exacerbates the problem. . . . Victims feel like the crime happened in a vacuum.”

Victims like Shannon Carson. Two years ago, when the cerebral palsy sufferer was pregnant with her second daughter, she requested a handicapped parking space from the management of her apartment complex in Lake Forest.

The management complied, but the issue allegedly touched off death threats. “We don’t need any cripples here,” read one note Carson found on her windshield. “One night you and your daughter will die if you don’t leave.”

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department investigated the threats but never made an arrest. The harassment eventually prompted the family to move into a gated community in Brea, Carson said.

“We felt isolated, pretty angry,” Carson said. “I do think the authorities are not putting any kind of effort into this.”

Acts of vandalism and intimidation accounted for 62% of the 1,750 hate crime incidents reported in California last year, state records show. Such incidents make up nearly 70% of all hate crimes nationwide, according to the FBI.

The crimes often occur at night, with few witnesses to provide clear identifications or clues.

Many police departments treat these incidents like regular vandalism, even though as hate crimes they carry stiffer punishments.

Although experts agree that such cases sometimes are impossible to solve, they also believe law enforcement can increase arrest rates by tracking patterns of similar incidents, doing background checks of victims and simply applying more resources.

“Prosecutions are hampered by the lack of arrests,” said San Diego Deputy Dist. Atty. Hector Jimenez, who heads that office’s hate crime unit. “Every cop knows how to work a burglary, a stolen car case, but not every cop knows how to work a hate crime.”

Jimenez recently prepared a hate crimes manual and protocol for local law enforcement agencies that calls for departments to assign a specific detective or team of detectives to handle hate crimes. In cases of vandalism and intimidation, such coordinated efforts can track patterns and hopefully lead to the perpetrators.

In another effort to link all types of incidents, the Los Angeles Police Department recently launched an online database that maps hate crime patterns. Authorities and outside experts said this improved tracking of nonviolent hate crimes is important because the incidents often lead to more serious incidents later on.

“They have to begin somewhere,” said Marcia Choo, assistant director of the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. “People start with low-level activities like graffiti, and they get away with it. That emboldens them to move to the next step.”

In Huntington Beach, police report that a group of teenagers that started out by carving swastikas into school tables and taunting blacks went on to commit several hate-motivated beatings a few years ago.

The white supremacist accused in this summer’s shooting rampage in the Midwest against blacks, Asians and Jews had a few years earlier been involved in lesser hate incidents, according to police.

Even for victims of smaller hate crimes, emotional wounds are slow to heal, especially when the culprits remain at large.

In 1991, vandals repeatedly broke into Norwalk’s Southeast Japanese School and Community Center, slashing judo mats and scrawling epithets in anticipation of the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

George Kato, a center board member, said attendance at the center decreased significantly after the string of attacks.

In 1995, the center decided to demolish the original building and construct a new one. The decision was made mainly to modernize facilities, but some members also hoped the project would erase reminders of the crimes.

“There were just too [many] sad memories in the old building,” he said.

Vandalism at the Holy Faith Korean Presbyterian Church in Cypress last year left many parishioners fearful. White supremacists painted swastikas and other racist symbols on the church’s windows and walls. The city provided more patrols for the area, which over time calmed church-goers.

“But,” one church official said, “we pray harder.”

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Prosecution Rate

Charges were filed in about 12% of the county’s reported hate crimes in 1998. Two cases led to convictions.

Total reported: 137

* 45 physical assault

* 92 vandalism/verbal assault

Total cases in which charges were filed: 16

* 11 Physical assault.

* 5 Vandalism/verbal assault

Source: County of Orange; District Attorney’s office