Yet another single-day hate crime spike in Los Angeles

June 14 of this year now holds the unfortunate record for most number of hate crimes reported in a single day in recent history in the City of Los Angeles.

Actually, it previously held the title jointly with March 31, as we reported eight hate crimes on both dates. But, the June 14 number recently increased to 11 hate crimes, according to publicly available LAPD data. 

The LAPD periodically updates past crime reports with new information, leading the department to recategorize or update past reports. Of course, there may have been more hate crimes in a single day that were not reported, or that occurred before Jan. 1, 2010, when the department started making its crime data publicly available.

The department defines a hate crime as “any criminal act or attempted criminal act directed against a person or persons based on the victim’s actual or perceived race, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, disability or gender.”

The previously reported eight hate crimes on June 14 included two victims of vandalism at 9 p.m. in a home on the 2700 block of Nichols Canyon Rd. in the Hollywood Hills, and six victims of aggravated assault at 9:10 a.m. on the 2600 block of North Broadway in Lincoln Heights. 

The three new hate crimes on June 14 are as follows: 

• At 12:45 a.m, a suspect or suspects vandalized the LAPD Central Community Police Station in Downtown, causing $399 worth of damage or less. The case was reported as a hate crime with “Anti-Jewish” and “Anti-Other Race/Ethnicity/Ancestry” biases. 
• A suspect vandalized the property of an 18-year-old victim by spraying graffiti at 5 p.m. at Spalding Mortuary in West Adams. The vandalism caused $400 worth of damage or more. The case was reported as a hate crime with an “Anti-Black or African American” bias. The victim was also targeted because of their gender. 
• At 5:45 p.m., a suspect burglarized and sprayed graffiti Chatsworth Charter High School in Chatsworth. 

We track hate crimes reported to the LAPD, and publish weekly alerts detailing each crime.

In the first six months of 2019, there were 151 hate crimes reported to the LAPD, a 20% jump from the first six months of last year, which had 125 reports. And last year, the City of Los Angeles saw one of the highest numbers of reported hate crimes in recent history with 293 — 5% more than 2017, which had 277.

How we did it: We examined publicly available LAPD data on reports crimes labeled with the code for “hate crime.” For neighborhood boundaries, we rely on the borders defined by the Los Angeles Times. Learn more about our data here.

LAPD data only reflects crimes that are reported to the department, not how many crimes actually occurred. In making our calculations, we rely on the data the LAPD makes publicly available. The LAPD does periodically update past crime reports with new information, which sometimes leads them to recategorize past reports. Those revised reports do not always automatically become part of the public database. We try to update our reporting when new data become available.

Want to know how your neighborhood fares? Or simply just interested in our data? Email us at askus@xtown.la.