Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere… –Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Grand Jury reviewed compliance with AB449, and gained an understanding of the local programs, initiatives, and interventions directed at combating hate crimes and incidents in Orange County. This study was motivated by concerns regarding the effectiveness of local efforts and the increase in hate crimes and incidents.
In 2023, Orange County reported 95 hate crimes, a decrease from 112 incidents in 2022 and the first decline since 2016. The most frequently targeted groups continue to be the Black, Jewish, and LGBTQ+ individuals. Black and Jewish residents, who comprise just over 2% of the county’s population, remain disproportionately impacted. Notably, hate crime data may be incomplete, due to four cities—Costa Mesa, Garden Grove, Orange, and Westminster— submitting incomplete records.
Civil rights organizations cautioned that the apparent drop in hate crimes might reflect underreporting rather than an actual reduction. For example, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) documented 88 antisemitic incidents in the Orange County/Long Beach region in 2023, a sharp increase from 55 the prior year, suggesting that official data may underrepresent the true scope of the problem. Advocates also criticized the limited inclusion of community partners in the count’s reporting process and highlighted the exclusion of noncriminal hate incidents, such as verbal harassment, distribution of hate flyers, and school-based bullying, which are often left out of law enforcement data.
In studying hate crimes and incidents, the Grand Jury found:
- Substantial barriers to reporting both hate crimes and hate incidents, such as fear of retaliation, distrust of law enforcement, and cultural stigma, which contribute to widespread underreporting
- Inconsistencies and gaps in how hate crimes and incidents are documented, primarily due to the decentralized nature of data collection
- Diminished collaboration between governmental bodies and community-based organizations
The Grand Jury study found the need for enhanced countywide coordination, improved public awareness strategies, and the reinstatement of robust collaborative frameworks such as the now defunct “Hate Prevention Network.” To promote progress in this critical area, the Grand Jury has made twelve recommendations at the end of this report.
Hate and prejudice have existed since the beginning of human history. However, the legal framework addressing hate crimes as a distinct category of criminal victimization is relatively new. The term “hate crime” itself gained prominence only in the early 1980s, driven by social justice movements advocating civil rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and victims’ rights.
These movements sought legal policies to combat discrimination, ultimately leading to the widespread adoption of hate crime legislation across the United States.
The 1968 Civil Rights Act significantly influenced today’s hate crime laws. Though not specifically addressing hate crimes, it used federal criminal civil rights protections against violence or threats targeting a person’s race, religion, color, or national origin, safeguarding rights like voting, education, and housing. However, due to complexities in proving bias motivation, the Act had limitations as a prosecutorial tool for hate crimes.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, in 1990, Congress passed the Hate Crime Statistics Act, which required the Attorney General to publish an annual report on crimes that showed prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation or ethnicity. The Act ordered the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to collect and report this data under its Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR), which has been gathering crime data from state and local law enforcement since 1930.
The FBI has been publishing hate crime statistics reports since 1991. Today, it defines a hate crime as a violent or property crime that is “motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender or gender identity.”
The California Department of Justice (DOJ) defines a “hate incident” as an action or behavior— such as name calling, distributing materials with hate messages in public places, and insults— motivated by hate but which does not rise to the level of a crime. Hate incidents may be brought to civil court.
These definitions have since been widely adopted by law enforcement agencies nationwide, including the DOJ. They provide a standardized and comprehensive framework. This consistency facilitates accurate reporting, enables reliable national data collection, and helps agencies better understand, track and respond to bias motivated behavior across jurisdictions.
The 2018 California State Auditor’s Report revealed that while reported hate crimes in the State had increased by more than 20% between 2014 and 2016, law enforcement agencies were falling short in identifying, reporting, and responding to these crimes. In response to the Auditor’s findings and a rise in anti-Asian violence during the COVID-19 pandemic, Assembly Member Phil Ting authored Assembly Bill 449 (AB449), the Freedom from Hate Crimes Act. The bill amended the existing penal codes on hate crimes and passed unanimously in both the State Assembly (75-0 on May 25, 2023) and the State Senate (39-0 on September 11, 2023. Governor Gavin Newsom signed it into law on October 23, 2023. AB 449 represents a significant step forward in strengthening California’s efforts to prevent, identify and respond to hate crimes.
The main provisions of AB449 are as follows:
- Standardizes Hate-Crime Policies. These policies must include legal definitions, bias- motivation criteria (including often-overlooked areas like anti-disability bias), reporting protocols, training schedules,
- Enhances accountability and transparency. Every law enforcement agency in California must adopt the Police officer Standards Training (POST)-compliant hate crimes policy by July 1, 2024.
- Responds to a real rise in hate crimes. The law addresses significant underreporting and uneven recognition of hate crime as demonstrated by the CA DOJ data showing a 31% increase in hate crime events from 2019 to 2020, with spikes in 2021, especially targeting AAPI, LGBTQ+, Jewish, Muslim, and disabilities communities.
- Prioritizes anti-disability bias. Disability-motivated hate crimes are historically invisible; fewer than 0.4% are reported. This bill explicitly requires policies and training that help officers recognize and document anti-disability bias and religious crimes.
- Empowers law enforcement through training. All officers must receive training, including on bias awareness, victim response and identification of less visible forms of hate (e.g., anti-homeless, and anti-disability).
- Requires accountability: Southern California law enforcement agencies must submit their POST-compliant hate crime policy to the California Department of Justice by January 1, 2025.
AB449 is expected to transform California’s hate-crime framework by creating statewide standards for responding to hate crimes. It promotes transparency: the DOJ will publish which agencies are complying, promoting public accountability and addressing underreporting.
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Categories: Local Government, Local News
The ochr commission needs to sack rabbi Steinberg whose brother is a Jewish Zionist politico and is an ADL operative. The ADL needs to be excluded from all collaboration re hate crime and incident reporting. They are a hate group that has a history of spying on U.S. citizens, defaming U.S. citizens and lobbying against official U.S. recognition of the Armenian Genocide on behalf of Israel and Turkey.
ED Response: Is it fair to sack someone for alleged actions of their family members?
Also the ADL did officially recognize the genocide according to Armenian National Committee of America.
See links to the two articles below for more on both issues.
https://anca.org/adls-official-recognition-of-armenian-genocide-ends-years-long-controversy/
https://www.latimes.com/socal/daily-pilot/entertainment/story/2024-03-19/gaza-war-divides-oc-human-relations-commission