LBPD Chief Jim McDonnell speaks to a crowd at The Center. Photo courtesy of Raúl A. Añorve.
Last night, The Center Long Beach along with the California Conference for Equality & Justice (CCEJ) hosted their annual community forum regarding the 2011 L.A. County Hate Crime Report, released just last week.
Long Beach Police Department Chief Jim McDonnell opened the forum with an important albeit discouraging fact: after falling hate crime rates for three years in a row (2010 marked the lowest rate of hate crimes recorded in 22 years), L.A. County saw a 15 percent increase in hate crimes activity in 2011—from 427 to 489. Our southern neighbors in Orange County also saw a rise of 14 percent over the same period.
The largest number of hate crimes within L.A. County (49 percent) were deemed to be racially motivated, with 60 percent of them being geared towards African-Americans. Both McDonnell and L.A. County Commission of Human Relations President Kathay Feng spoke about the alarming amount of hate crimes attached to not only gang members but also white supremacist ideology, together accounting for about a third of total hate crimes in the county.
“While we are hearted by the relatively low numbers [only second to 2010], we are alarmed that 21 percent of hate crimes show evidence of white supremacy and 12 percent of hate crimes were committed by gang members,” stated Feng in a press release.
Sexual orientation accounted for 25 percent of the hate crimes committed last year—a 13 percent increase over the previous—with a staggering 71 percent of those being violent in nature and 84 percent of them geared specifically towards gay men. This is an alarming shift considering vandalism accounted for the majority of hate crimes committed last year.
Examples of LGBT-oriented hate crimes included a man being attacked on July 24 of last year after being asked if he way gay and two men attacked outside The Center last Halloween by two young men.
As Wende Nichols-Julien of the CCEJ pointed out, the overwhelming amount of perpetrators are male, with 18- to 25-year-olds accounting for the majority of those perpetrators. These perpetrators are mainly divided into three categories: “thrill seekers” who are looking to gain some form of notoriety or recognition amongst peers; “reactive members” who somehow feel their rights or space is threatened (e.g. they attack Mexican-Americans following the passage of the Dream Act in fear their own child’s space in school might be threatened); and, according to Nichols-Julien, the most dangerous being the “mission offenders” who often congregate in groups which share a mission of hate, such as the previously mentioned white supremacy ideologues and gang members.
Long Beach, overall, is “doing something right,” according CCEJ representative Danielle Nava. Our city is not on par with overall county stats, as we have once again dropped from 15 hate crimes in 2010 to 8 in 2011.
“We believe this drop has to do with our police department and our active community members,” Nava stated, consistently driving a point that many—from McDonnell to Nichols-Julien to The Center Administrative Director Porter Gilberg—also pointed out: cooperation is key in preventing such crimes from occuring.
The larger issue, of course, was not just to provide statistics, though numbers are in a sense always important in providing a broader picture. As Nichols-Julien commented, “Harm needs to be addressed—despite a crime,” highlighting that hate speech, though legal, is highly important to address from a community policing standpoint since it often acts as the gateway to criminal offenses.
In essence, the point of the forum was not to necessarily discuss why we have hate crime legislation or enforce the concept that hate is indeed alive and well; for the most part, as Councilmember Dr. Suja Lowenthal pointed out in her closing remarks, that would be a bit of preaching to the choir.
“Certainly if you look around the room,” Lowenthal said, “there isn’t a single person here that needs to be educated on [hate crimes] so I don’t think that is what we’re doing today. You’re all ambassadors—and what we’re hoping is that you’ll grow this stewardship, this ambassadorship that we in the City of Long Beach are known for.”
To view the report in its entirety, click here.