Hearings Will Probe Silence Over Hate Crimes
As part of a statewide program, the Orange County Human Relations Commission will hold a hearing Wednesday in Santa Ana in an attempt to find out what keeps people from reporting hate crimes.
Among the scheduled speakers is the sister of Thien Minh Ly, the victim of a racially motivated killing on a Tustin High School tennis court in 1996.
Rusty Kennedy, executive director of the commission, said underreporting probably is less a problem in Orange County than elsewhere because the commission has a relatively high profile, “but even here there are significant numbers of people who don’t report these kinds of things.”
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The California attorney general’s Civil Rights Commission on Hate Crimes announced in March that crimes of bigotry were being overlooked. The 44-member commission consists of academics, leaders of community groups, government officials, prosecutors and police chiefs from throughout the state. Kennedy is a member.
The county commission has tried to encourage groups to report hate crimes, but those efforts have not helped much, Kennedy said. He suspects that less than half the hate crimes against Latinos are reported, especially those against recent immigrants. In 1998, the commission did a Spanish-language outreach program along with the Latino activist group Los Amigos of Orange County, the Mexican consulate and Spanish-language media.
To make people aware of the hearings, the Human Relations Commission mailed notices to organizations representing minority groups and victims and to law enforcement agencies.
The hearing is scheduled from 10 a.m. to noon and from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at 1300 S. Grand Ave., Building B, in conference room A/B.
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