‘It is unacceptable’: L.A. County hate crimes reached an all-time high last year

Jewish students at El Camino Real High School walk out in response to recent antisemitic incidents at the school. A father on his way to a Tarzana synagogue was interrupted by a man threatening to “kill all of you Jews.” The grim encounters were among the record-breaking number of hate crimes reported across L.A. County last year, an increase fueled by an onslaught of harassment directed at Jewish, Black and LGBTQ+ people, according to a county report released Wednesday. The authors also noted that 5% of all hate crimes involved “language regarding conflict in the Middle East.” Brian Levin, founder of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism and a member of the California Commission on the State of Hate, said the findings match up with what he saw in big cities across America last year, all of which saw jumps in hate crimes against Jewish people, Muslims, Latinos and LGBTQ+ people. The state had used incomplete data from the Los Angeles Police Department, Levin said, noting that the new county report includes nearly 700 more hate crimes than the attorney general’s report took into account. Speakers at Wednesday’s news conference said the increase in hate crimes was probably due in part to a county campaign to encourage people to report such incidents.