But that could change. “We have been anticipating that we may see an increase,” said Becky Monroe, a senior official at the California Civil Rights Department.
California is better prepared to deal with bias attacks that have typically surged as a result of war and terrorism overseas. The state now has the hotline, increased security thanks to state and federal grants, and a legal framework that has emerged in recent years to prosecute hate crimes following a spike in anti-Asian attacks.
The “California vs Hate” hotline has gotten over 400 reports since it launched in May, according to preliminary data. Unlike law enforcement statistics, the hotline collects reports of any incident, whether it rose to the level of a crime or not. Callers can get help finding mental health resources or navigating the criminal justice system if they want to report a crime.
In anticipation of a spike, case workers at the Civil Rights Department have been reaching out to mosques, synagogues, and cultural groups that serve Muslim or Arab-American Californians and are concerned about hate crimes, Monroe said.
The idea for the hotline was first floated in 2017 by then-Assemblymember David Chiu (D-San Francisco) in response to the skyrocketing number of hate crimes he said were a result of rhetoric from the Trump administration, but legislators weren’t convinced a hate crime hotline was necessary, Chiu recalled. He revived the idea in 2021 along with Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi (D-Torrance) amid an uptick in hostility against Asian Americans and a racially motivated spa shooting in Atlanta that killed eight people — six of Asian descent.
Chiu, who is now the city attorney of San Francisco, said he’s worried about an increase in hate incidents as a result of the war. “I see a direct throughline,” he said. “Our society has become all too accustomed to shocking examples of intolerance and hate.”
Jewish schools across the Bay Area have canceled classes or increased…
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