City Council seeks report on rising hate crimes in LA

The City Council Tuesday directed the Los Angeles Police Department to provide a report rising hate crimes in the city, including an overview of the city’s hate crime reporting resources and its efforts to raise public awareness of those resources.

The council unanimously approved a motion authored by Councilwoman Katy Yaroslavsky that also instructs the city’s Civil, Human Rights and Equity Department to report on the “LA for All” campaign, which is billed as an effort to stand against hate and encourage residents to prevent hate crimes and incidents.

“All of our communities deserve to feel safe and we all deserve to feel like we belong,” Yaroslavsky said. “This motion, I hope, is the beginning of a true dialogue on what more we need to be doing as a city and as a council to address the rise in these hate crimes.”

Yaroslavsky’s motion describes hate crimes as those that are motivated by the victim’s actual or perceived characteristics, including race, ethnicity, religion, gender, disability, or sexual orientation.

“Recent years have seen an unprecedented rise in hate crimes, a rise that has become a consistently alarming trend,” according to the motion. “In the last year alone, there have been a number of brazen displays of anti-Semitism and homophobia, as well as several racially motivated attacks.”

Most notably, two Jewish men were shot within 24 hours of each other last month in the Pico-Robertson district after they left synagogues. The suspect in those shootings is facing federal hate crime and firearms charges.

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