Attacks on Gays, Jews Mark Rise in Hate Crimes

A sharp upswing in reports of crime targeting gay men and Jews helped push Los Angeles County to an overall increase in reported hate crime last year, the county Human Relations Commission said Wednesday.

County officials acknowledged, however, that the increase was at least partially attributable to improved reporting of the crimes, making it impossible to know whether the number of incidents actually increased.

In particular, the attack last August on the North Valley Jewish Community Center, for which white supremacist Buford O. Furrow Jr. has been charged, led to an “unprecedented awareness” of hate crimes, and may have contributed to better reporting countywide, according to Robin Toma, acting executive director of the Human Relations Commission.

Five people were injured in that attack. Furrow also is charged with killing Filipino American mail carrier Joseph Ileto nearby.

The Human Relations Commission issued its annual report on hate crime at a news conference attended by top county officials, including Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti and County Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky, Don Knabe and Yvonne Brathwaite Burke.

They called for greater efforts to combat hate crime, and extolled existing programs.

Garcetti lauded a program he established that attempts to divert young perpetrators of hate crimes in the Antelope Valley and Long Beach.

Overall in 1999, the report said, 859 crimes were committed that are believed to have been motivated by hatred based on the victim’s race, religion or sexual orientation. That was up 11.7% from 1998, but well below the county’s peak year of 1996, when 995 hate crimes were reported.

The upswing matched a 12% statewide increase in hate crimes, which was announced last month by the state attorney general’s office.

The greatest number of hate crimes in Los Angeles County were based on race, but the biggest increases were seen in incidents involving sexual orientation and religion.

The vast majority of crimes based on religion were nonviolent, but more than half of those against gays and lesbians were violent.

“Today’s information is really very alarming to me,” said Gwenn Baldwin, executive director of the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center. “We are witnessing a grisly and frightening crime trend.”

However, gays and lesbians are becoming much more willing to report hate crimes, Toma said. One reason, he said, is the “extraordinarily sensitive” attitude of the sheriff’s office in West Hollywood, where many of the attacks on gays and lesbians occur.

Largely as a result of reporting by that office, the Westside area reported by far the highest rate of hate crimes in the county--more than 10 times that of the west San Gabriel Valley and the southeast section of the county, for instance.

Toma conceded that it is highly unlikely that the Westside is, in fact, far more prone to hate-based attacks than elsewhere. More likely, he said, is that the rate of reporting is far higher there.

“There are police departments that have trained their officers well in identifying and reporting hate crimes, and other departments that seem to have a great deal of difficulty in dealing with hate crime, and seem to want to call it anything but hate crime,” he said.

The Azusa Police Department also is especially sensitive to hate crime, Toma said. He refused to identify departments that were performing poorly, saying it would hurt the county’s efforts to encourage improvement.

Although the greatest increases were seen in attacks on gay men and Jews, the most common hate crime target remained African Americans, who account for 11% of the county’s population.

The most common hate crime involved a white man victimizing an African American. There were 74 such attacks last year. The next most common types of attacks were by Latino men against African Americans, and by Latino men against gay men.

The county has been keeping track of hate crimes since 1980, when a scant 26 were reported. The numbers have grown sharply as more law enforcement agencies have trained their officers to investigate and report hate crimes, and victims--especially those attacked because of their sexual orientation--have grown more comfortable about filing reports.

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More Victims

More hate crimes were reported in Los Angeles County last year than the year before, with large surges in crimes against gay men and Jews. But officials say people aren’t necessarily more hateful--the increase could have been caused by greater sensitivity and better reporting.

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Victims 1998 1999 % Change Race 436 458 5% Black 219 232 6% Latino 90 85 --6% White 72 81 13% Asian 33 34 3% Middle Eastern 20 10 --50%

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Sexual orientation 226 264 17% Gay male 173 211 22% Lesbian 45 47 4%

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Religion 102 137 34% Jewish 86 118 37%

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Other* 26 41 58% Disabled 4 0 --100% Gender 1 0 --100% Total 769 859 12%

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* Includes other sexual orientation victims, racial groups and religious groups

Source: Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations’ 1999 Hate Crime Report