State saw surge in hate crimes
Attacks on Asian, Black people led 31% increase in 2020
Attacks targeting Black and Asian people in California drove an overall rise in hate crimes in 2020, with reported cases jumping 31% from the year before and reaching their highest levels in over a decade, according to figures released Wednesday by state Attorney General Rob Bonta.
The surge in hate crimes documented by police agencies comes amid a national crisis and a broader increase in violent crime. Highprofile attacks on Asian Americans in the Bay Area and beyond have stoked fear in many communities, while a national drive for ra
cial justice after a Minneapolis police officer’s murder of George Floyd has spurred worries about a backlash.
The report made public by Bonta’s office found that reported hate crime events increased 31% — from 1,015 in 2019 to 1,330 in 2020. Of those, racebased hate crimes saw the largest jump, with a 67.3% increase, from 523 in 2019 to 875 in 2020.
A significant part of that was an increase in antiAsian violence during the pandemic, Bonta said.
“There was a surge in antiAsian violence correlated with the words of leaders who sought to divide us when we were at our most vulnerable,” he said, an apparent reference to inflammatory statements about the coronavirus by former President Donald Trump and others. The highest number of these incidents occurred in March and April of 2020, Bonta added.
There was a 107% increase in hate crimes targeting the Asian community from 2019 to 2020, “the majority of it violent,” Bonta said. His office released a separate report on antiAsian hate crimes during the pandemic.
All racial groups saw spikes in reported attacks. AntiBlack crimes were the highest in number, with 456 incidents, an 87.7% increase from 2019, according to the report.
AntiHispanic or antiLatino hate crime events rose from 110 in 2019 to 152 in 2020, an increase of 38.2%. Reported antiwhite crime events rose from 39 in 2019 to 82 in 2020.
The report counted only hate crimes reported to police, which are likely lower than the actual number of hate crimes, a caveat that Bonta acknowledged. The data reflects reports of these alleged hate crimes by police agencies, not prosecutors.
The report also did not take into account how the pandemic and stayathome orders affected the data, the report said. But Bonta said in early May that a rise in crimes and racist incidents against members of the Asian and Pacific Islander communities during the pandemic partially led to the creation of a new Racial Justice Bureau within California’s Department of Justice.
At the time, Bonta said the bureau would investigate hate crimes and hate groups.
On Wednesday, Bonta’s office also released guidance for local law enforcement agencies that will help them properly identify and investigate hate crimes, improve communication with victims to increase the success of prosecutions, and identify alternative forms of sentencing or restorative justice approaches to hate crime prosecutions, he said. That includes a discussion of what facts qualify something as a hate crime.
A Stanford Law School report released in June found that the current approaches to confronting hate crimes rely heavily on “increased law enforcement and imprisonment.” The report suggested alternative approaches may offer a way to “identify and mend the unique individual and community harms caused by hate crimes, while demanding meaningful accountability for those who cause harm.”
Restorative justice approaches can happen alongside law enforcement practices, or independently in a community. For example, Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth , a nonprofit working with youth, conducts “conflict circles” by mediating between those who were harmed by an incident and those responsible for the harm, and other community members.
Many communities of color often distrust law enforcement, contributing to the underreporting of hate crimes, Stanford’s report said, adding that it’s also not clear that current laws deter further hate crimes.
“Hate crimes are our priority,” Bonta said. “Local law enforcement is fully capable of addressing hate crimes, and it’s important that we do it in the right way.”
Over half of hate crimes are not identified or prosecuted as such, Bonta said. His office is also releasing brochures in more than two dozen languages with information about how to report a hate crime.
Carl Chan, president of Oakland’s Chinatown Chamber of Commerce — a victim of a hate crime himself — said that these tools will help significantly, as many hate crimes go unreported because of language barriers.
Chan said that these new resources will connect “all the dots” between victims, law enforcement and prosecutors. “Together, we can actually stop all this,” he said.
Bonta, Chan and Oakland City Councilmember Sheng Thao each urged people to report hate crimes, write down any words used, take photos and save evidence when possible.
“It is only through data and counting your reports that we can move forward with the resources that all communities need to actually come up with the resources that all communities need,” Thao said.
“I urge law enforcement and all Californians to make use of the tools provided today,” Bonta said. “This is not who we are. We can and we will address these challenges. We will combat the forces of hate, and we will prevail.”