Reported anti-Asian hate crimes more than doubled in California last year compared to 2019, and an 87% year-over-year increase in anti-Black hate crimes largely drove an overall statewide increase in reported hate crimes in 2020.
That's according to state data released on Wednesday in a pair of special reports, as California Attorney General Rob Bonta issued guidance for law enforcement officials to aggressively investigate and prosecute hate crimes throughout the state.
"Overall, hate crimes in the state are at their highest reported level in more than a decade," Bonta told reporters in a Wednesday press conference. "Hate crimes are up generally. They’re also, of course, up against the (Asian-Pacific Islander) community."
Eighty-nine anti-Asian hate crimes were reported across the state in 2020, according to state data, compared to just 43 in 2019. That represented an increase of 107%.
There were almost as many hate crimes reported in March and April (32) at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic as there were in all of 2019
Bonta linked the increase to the “pandemic-fueled, trumped-up rhetoric ... perpetuated at the highest levels of office,” seemingly referring to former President Donald Trump and other political leaders' consistent, inflammatory claims blaming China for the spread and origin of COVID-19.
In the same year George Floyd’s murder set off global "Black Lives Matter" protests and a reckoning with systemic racism, more anti-Black hate crimes were reported in California than any year in the last decade.
The state Department of Justice received 456 reports of anti-Black hate crimes in 2020, compared to 243 in 2019. That total was the highest since 2011, when the state received 313 reports of anti-Black hate crimes.
Increases in anti-Asian and anti-Black hate crimes combined to account for almost all of California's increases overall. There 1,330 reported hate crimes in 2020 and 1,015 in 2019, with 259 more anti-Asian and anti-Black hate crimes.
The number of actual hate crimes is almost certainly higher, according to Bonta. The Attorney General said Wednesday that "over 50%" of hate crimes aren’t "identified or investigated" as such.
"The details in the bulletin that we have put out today provides guidance to local law enforcement so they can properly identify, properly investigate hate crimes," he added.
Bonta said law enforcement officials are not using tools to investigate hate crimes "to the fullest capacity now," and he urged them to read the findings in the report. He also encouraged victims of hate crimes to report what happened to police and with as much specificity as possible about what was said and done.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, in a statement, said his administration is "proposing an investment of $100 million to support survivors and another $200 million in community-based responses to violence."
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