Anti-hate groups critical of O.C. report charting hate crime decline in 2023

At first glance, Orange County appeared to have reversed a years-long trend of rising hate crimes, according to a new annual report.

Despite the early tensions of the Israel-Gaza war and a polarizing election season around the corner, the 2023 Orange County Hate Crime Report found that hate crimes in O.C. against African Americans, Jewish Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders all declined.

Attacks against Arab Americans, Muslims and LGBTQ+ people remained the same, as hate crimes declined overall for the first time since 2016.

By contrast, the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations’ recent “No More Silence” hate crimes report for 2023 charted a dramatic 45% increase, including the largest number of bias-motivated attacks against African Americans, Latinos, Jewish and LGBTQ+ people ever recorded.

Instead of finding the O.C. report encouraging, local civil rights groups and community organizations that collaborated on previous hate crime reports for the county are criticizing its revised methodology.

“When we see this report include only police data without collaboration with local organizations, we know already that it’s going to be data that is incomplete or undercounted,” said Nikki Oei, manager for Orange County Asian Pacific Islander Community Alliance’s “Stop the Hate” program. “The biggest challenge is historical mistrust within communities, not just with law enforcement but all government agencies.”

In a departure from past years, Groundswell, a nonprofit that the Orange County Board of Supervisors declined to contract with again in June, did not assist the commission in compiling hate-related statistics.

Groundswell collaborated on past reports with groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Los Angeles, the Anti-Defamation League, Stop AAPI Hate and the LGBTQ Center O.C., all of which collect reports of hate crimes and incidents from their respective communities on their own.

Absent that, no statistics on “hate incidents,” which can include yelling racial epithets or distributing hate leaflets on cars or at homes that are otherwise not prosecutable, were included in the report, which relied on law enforcement data on reported hate crimes only.

“This is consistent with hate crime only reporting from other counties such as Los Angeles County,” said Molly Nichelson, a county spokesperson. “Due to the limitations of hate incidents, such as potential underreporting [or] overreporting, differences in tracking incidents, inability to determine duplication of incident reporting, it was determined to not include them in this report.”

Anti-Asian hate crimes in O.C. showed a 50% decrease, which is an outlier from other county hate reports.

“Without hate incident data, we have a very incomplete picture of how Asian American and Pacific Islander communities experience hate, especially for our youth and older adults,” Oei said.

A chart from the report shows hate crimes fell in 2023, but the report urged “caution” with the data.

(Screenshot by Gabriel San Román)

The report also noted 14 anti-Jewish hate crimes in 2023, down from 19 the year before. The downtrend contrasts with the ADL’s data for 2023, which showed an uptick of 88 hate-motivated crimes and incidents in O.C. and Long Beach.

“Given the changes in how the data appears to be formulated, we need to be a little thoughtful about how we engage with the current statistics for 2023,” said Matt Friedman, regional director for the ADL in Orange County and Long Beach. “Orange County does not seem to be reflective of statistics we’re seeing in other places, whether nationally, in the state or other Southern California counties.”

Friedman said that hate activity, overall, is underreported and hopes that the county will return to collaborating with organizations like his own for future hate-tracking efforts.

The possibility of a “slight underreporting” of hate crimes was acknowledged in the report, which pointed to partial data submitted by Costa Mesa, Garden Grove, Westminster and Orange police departments on account of records management issues.

One finding that remained consistent with past reports is that African Americans, who comprise just 2.3% of the county’s population, are the most targeted group for reported hate crime attacks.

For other anti-hate organizations, an incomplete picture of O.C.’s hate climate goes beyond partial reporting by some law enforcement agencies.

“We know that in 2023, Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian, and anti-Arab hate were at an all-time high,” said Amr Shabaik, CAIR-LA’s legal director. “The exclusion of community-based organizations and the sole reliance on incomplete numbers of hate crimes reported to law enforcement does not capture this reality.”

Shabaik added that CAIR’s national organization received the most biased-based complaints in its 30-year history in 2023, with the local Anaheim-based office reporting 600 complaints alone.

Like community organizations, O.C. school districts also did not contribute any hate-related data, even as the previous report noted schools as the most likely location for hate incidents to occur.

Aside from the accuracy of the statistics, another criticism of the report is its lack of any prevention strategies outside of the O.C. district attorney‘s own community outreach efforts.

“Because community organizations are not a part of developing this report, there are [fewer opportunities to provide] recommendations for how to move forward,” Oei said. “There’s no communication on our end to be able to support the county’s efforts for hate prevention, which we are always willing to do.”

“The county can now take this report, expand it to be more comprehensive by including community and victim self-reports of hate as well as work closely with community organizations and resources to develop a prevention plan and strategies on addressing hate together.”

Supervisor Don Wagner addressed the commission in support of Rabbi Rick Steinberg during a meeting last year.

(Eric Licas)

The county’s report arrived amid a reshuffling of the O.C. Human Relations Commission.

In addition to declining to renew Groundswell’s contract, supervisors are also set to vote on Jan. 14 on a number of changes to the commission’s bylaws set to strengthen the county’s control over it, including a ban on statements or press releases issued by the commission on its own behalf.

Shabaik called the proposed revamps an attempt to “silence and weaken” the commission.

“We are also concerned that the efforts to leave out community-based organizations and to muzzle the speech of the commission are part of efforts to shut down voices and discussions of the rise in hate against Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims and how that rise in hate is directly related to the ongoing genocide being committed against Palestinians by Israel,” Shabaik added.

After the onset of the Israel-Gaza war in late 2023, commissioners published separate statements on antisemitism and Islamophobia that soon became embroiled in controversy amid the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Pro-Palestinian activists turned out to commission meetings last year and called for the resignation or removal of Commissioner Rabbi Rick Steinberg over his vote against the Islamophobia statement, which he said was based on its framing of the conflict.

Jewish organizations and community members defended Steinberg and called criticisms of him antisemitic while denouncing Groundswell and the commission for not doing the same.

“We are strong advocates of continuing to have government bodies dedicated to speaking out against hate and keeping track of hate,” Friedman said. “Unfortunately, there seems to be a blind spot with some groups when it comes to speaking out against hate that’s directed towards the Jewish community, and in this case, also Jewish commissioners.”

Amid the acrimony, the commission last met in June just before supervisors decided to let the Groundswell contract expire.

All monthly meetings, including the most recently scheduled Jan. 9 meeting, have since been canceled.