Hate crimes against disabled

Re “The homeless and hate,” editorial, Oct. 30

The Times is flatly and shamefully wrong when it says that an attack on a victim with a disability “isn’t rooted in the sort of pervasive discrimination experienced by racial, religious and other minorities.” In fact, some research shows that people with disabilities -- many of them homeless -- are victims of much higher levels of violent crime than the general population. Many of these vicious crimes are motivated by biases such as revulsion, fear, resentment or a belief that people with disabilities are inferior and therefore “deserving.”

Under California law, these are hate crimes. But you’d never know it from the official hate-crime statistics or, unfortunately, The Times’ editorials.

Greg deGiere

Sacramento