Numbers mark third consecutive year of decreasing hate
crimes
By Lori Stuenkel
Gilroy – Hate crimes in California decreased by 5.5 percent in 2004 from 2003, according to a report released Friday by Attorney General Bill Lockyer.
Last year’s statistics mark the third consecutive year of decreasing hate crime, and bring to a 10-year low the number of hate crime events, offenses, victims and known suspects.
A total 1,409 hate crimes were reported last year. While hate crimes motivated by race, ethnicity or national origin remained the most frequent type of hate crime – accounting for 65.4 percent in 2004, a slight increase over 2003 – other types decreased, including crimes motivated by sexual orientation and religion.
Crimes against blacks, which make up more than half all racially-motivated hate crimes, increased 8 percent, with 500 reported. Hispanics, however, experienced the largest increase in racially-motivated hate crimes committed against them: a 34-percent jump over 2003. Anti-Hispanic crimes accounted for 15 percent of all anti-ethnicity hate crimes, according to the report.
Anti-Asian/Pacific Islander hate crimes also increased, by 4.6 percent, to account for 7.5 percent of racially motivated crimes.
Also, both whites and an “other” category, which includes Arabs or Middle Easterners, experienced a 28 percent and 35 percent decrease in hate crimes committed against them.
“Diversity is essential to California’s social and economic strength,” Lockyer said in releasing the report. “That is why we must continue to do everything possible to raise public awareness about the threat hate crimes pose to our communities and keep the number of hate crimes down.”
Hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation and religion both decreased last year and account for 18 percent and 14 percent of all hate crimes, respectively.
No particular motivation for hate crimes has drastically changed in the past five years, although anti-race crimes peaked in 2001, which Lockyer’s office related with the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Those hate crimes decreased during the following two years, but a 1.9 percent increase occurred in 2004, according to the report.
Hate crimes are defined in California Penal Code § 13023 as crimes or attempted crimes where “there is a reasonable cause to believe that the crime was motivated, in whole or in part, by the victim’s race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, or physical or mental disability.”
The Attorney General’s report on hate crimes has been released each year since 1995.
