By David Israel – JewishPress.com
349 hate crimes were reported to the Los Angeles Police Department, a 16.7% increase from the first half of 2021, and more than double the same period in 2020, according to data compiled by Crosstown at USC, a nonprofit news organization based at the USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism.
In 2021, Los Angeles recorded 596 hate crimes, which was the highest number ever, but it looks like this year, the city is on its way to top even that figure.
The monthly record ever for hate crime reports in Los Angeles was broken in May, with 78 citywide, followed by the second-highest 71 reports in June. For comparison: pre-Covid LA saw, between 2018 and early 2020, from 20 to 40 hate crimes reported each month.
Brian Levin, Director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, told Crosstown that Angelinos should expect further increases in hate crime reports with the approaching elections. “Generally, if you take the last ten years of FBI data and you rank by quarter, the second half of the year is the one that has more hate crimes,” Levin said.
Good to know.
Now, the part you’ve been waiting for, antisemitism. Well, there’s a small positive surprise there, according to the report: from Jan. 1 to Jun. 30, 2021, there were 48 reported antisemitic hate crimes, compared with 39 in the same period this year.
Other hate crimes such as anti-Hispanic, anti-Asian, and anti-White have also subsided this year. But anti-Black hate crime reports increased significantly.
The ADL’s Los Angeles Regional Director Jeffrey I. Abrams told Crosstown that “2021 was, according to our annual audit on antisemitic instances, a record-setting year across the country, in our state, and in Los Angeles,” and despite the minor drop in incidents in 2022, the LA Jewish community has reported an increase in dangerous situations.
In 2021, Los Angeles experienced 14 cases of antisemitic assault, and, according to Abrams, “each and every one of these antisemitic incidents is not just individual attacks against that particular person, but they’re message crimes.”
