In the first week of November, the city of Los Angeles recorded the 597th hate crime of 2022. That was one more than the previous annual high, which had occurred just the year before.
The grim count continued to climb as the year wore on. By the close of 2022, there had been 692 hate crimes in the city, the highest number since the Los Angeles Police Department began making its data public in 2010. It also marked the ninth consecutive yearly rise for hate crimes in the city.
Black Angelenos were the target of 205 hate crimes in 2022, more than any other group. That is a 25% increase from the 162 victims in 2021. Black people account for around 8% of the city’s population.
Latino residents were the victim of 95 crimes, the second-highest total. There were 86 hate crimes targeting Jewish people, and on 85 occasions gay men were targeted.
The actual count may be much higher. Hate crimes are known to be widely under-reported, as some victims do not trust police or are otherwise wary of law enforcement. A U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics survey found that only half of all hate crimes were reported to police.
One reason for the consistently rising count in Los Angeles may be that the LAPD actively encourages people to report hate crimes and thoroughly tracks them. The department has a dedicated hate-crime unit and, like the FBI, identifies bias against 35 different groups.
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Tracking ‘hate incidents’
A hate crime is defined as when the victim of a criminal act is targeted based on gender, race, sexual orientation, religion or disability. These are different from hate incidents, which generally include instances of racially motivated abuse that are protected by free speech laws and do not result in a formal crime report. The LAPD also tracks these.
In certain instances, hate crimes involve serious physical violence. That…
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