The 2022 Orange County Hate Crime Report revealed that hate crime incidents in the county have risen 13% from last year and that the total amount in the past five years has nearly doubled.

The OC Human Relations Council, now called Groundswell, released the report on Sept. 21. The report begins with statistics showing an overall increase in hate crime activity in recent years, not only in Orange County, but throughout California. The report dives into the diverse populations represented in the county and which communities are getting targeted most by hate incidents, as well as providing analysis of crime patterns and presenting prevention tools. 

Don Han, the director of Community Partnerships for Groundswell, identified the key factors that initiated a rise in bias-motivated hate in an interview. 

“If we talk about the last 5 years, we see underlying societal factors such as rising tension, polarizations, economic disparity (and) the contributed escalation of bias-motivated behavior,” Han told The Panther. 

The report uses the California Attorney General's definition of a hate crime as “a crime against a person, group or property motivated by the victim's real or perceived protected social group.” The California Department of Justice’s definition of a hate incident is used, declaring an incident as “an action or behavior motivated by bias-motivated hate but which, for one or more reasons, is not a crime.”

Using these parameters, the report noted 450 hate crimes and incidents occurring in 2022. 162 of these were considered hate crimes, while the other 288 were classified as hate incidents.

Just over half of the crimes and incidents were prompted by race/ethnicity/national origin bias. The Black community was the most targeted in race-related activity, while the Jewish community was the most targeted religious group.

There was also a significant increase in LGBTQ+-related hate in 2022. According to the report, the amount of hate activity towards the LGBTQ+ community was more than twice the amount from the year before with a 126% increase.

“To experience hate is so traumatizing, and if people experience it and we don’t talk about it, talk about a way to prevent it and to stand up for each other, then we kind of don’t know what to do,” Han said.

The highest form of incident was via graffiti or vandalism, which accounted for nearly half of all reported hate actions of the year. Physical assault followed with 28%, and violent threats made up 17% of all recorded events.

More data from the report stated that, in cases when the gender of the attacker was known, 85% of them were men. In the 97 reports where the race of the attacker was stated, 46% were White and 36% identified as Latino/a. 

The majority of hate crimes occurred on streets, at a residence or at a place of worship. According to the report. There was also a 178% increase of hate activity in schools compared to the previous year.

“The OCDA (Orange County District Attorney) Hate Crimes Unit is staffed by three prosecutors (and) two investigators and is supervised by the head of Special Prosecutions,” District Attorney Todd Spitzer stated in the report.

Spitzer continued: “In addition to prosecuting hate crimes, the Hate Crimes Unit works with our law enforcement partners to train first responders how to improve potential hate crime investigations, as well as educating members of our community on how to identify hate crimes and hate incidents and how to effectively report them to law enforcement.” 

The report noted that, since 2019, the District Attorney’s Office has managed to prosecute over double the amount of hate crimes than the past 25 years’ worth of previous administrations.

There are 103 hate and anti-government groups in California, and 21 of them have chapters in Orange County, according to the report. With these numbers, and with the dramatic rise in hate-related activity in previous years, it is crucial to utilize prevention strategies. 

The report detailed different ways for community members to get involved, including anti-hate advocacy, service training, reporting and data collection, community engagement and education. One way that Groundswell is working to combat hate activity is through its Hate Hurts Us All campaign.

In response to the growth in hate crimes and incidents in the past few years, Hate Hurts Us All was initiated by Groundswell in summer 2022. $1 million was put into the project to educate and advocate against hate activity in the county. 

Han said that Groundswell encourages people in the community to speak up and be an advocate. He recommends spreading awareness through school-affiliated diversity, equity and inclusion organizations and sharing data from the report with others. 

“One of the things that we try to encourage community members to do is to switch from being a bystander to an upstander,” Han said. “A bystander just sits there and watches what’s happening. To be an upstander, you say: ‘I have to do something about it. I gotta talk about this issue, spread the word.’ You don’t have to go out into the middle of the Orange circle and scream your lungs out. You could just have a conversation.”

To report a hate crime, Orange County residents can call the number 2-1-1 and press 6. They can also email ochateactivity@211OC.org or text “ochateactivity” to 898211.