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Are hate crimes increasing in SLO County?

July 11, 2018

San Luis Obispo County law enforcement agencies reported nine hate crime incidents in 2017, three times more than in 2016, according to California Department of Justice statistics. However, hate crimes are not necessarily trending up in SLO County. [Cal Coast Times]

The state of California defines a hate crime as a crime motivated by the victim’s race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation or physical or mental disability. The state Department of Justice tallies hate crime incidents reported by law enforcement agencies. Many of the incidents do not result in charges being filed in court.

Of last year’s nine SLO County hate crime incidents, the San Luis Obispo Police Department reported five of the incidents, and the county sheriff’s office reported three. The only other reported hate crime incident occurred at the Oceano Dunes.

The nine incidents involved a combined 14 victims and six suspects.

Only three of SLO County’s 2017 hate crime cases were referred to prosecutors. Charges were filed in each of the three cases.

In 2016, none of the three reported hate crime incidents were referred to prosecutors or resulted in prosecution. Two of the three reported 2016 incidents occurred in San Luis Obispo while the other occurred at Cal Poly.

Over the last 12 years, the number of reported hate crime incidents in SLO County has fluctuated up and down, ranging from three to 14. The high of 14 reports occurred in 2007, in which there were 10 hate crime incidents reported in the city of SLO alone.

Statewide, reports of hate crime incidents increased 17.4 percent last year, rising from a total of 173 in 2016 to 195 in 2017. But as is the case locally, the number of statewide hate crime reports had been a lot higher a decade prior. In 2008, California law enforcement agencies reported a total of 353 hate crime incidents.

In 2017, the groups in California that faced the sharpest rise in hate crime incidents were Hispanics and Jews. Anti-Hispanic incidents reported by law enforcement rose 51.8 percent in 2017, while anti-Jewish incidents increased by 26.8 percent.

Already in 2018, San Luis Obispo police made a hate crime arrest. Officers arrested a San Luis Obispo High School student who threatened to physically assault another student because of his autism and also engaged in a physical altercation with the victim.


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I’m sorry you feel that way. My family has mixed races. White, Asian, Hispanic and Native American. I have also lived in Tucson, Santa Cruz and Los Angeles. If you ever live there for any amount of time, you will find out what the gang situation is really like. And the illegal alien situation also. And my family feel the same as I do. Please don’t label me as a racist.


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America my response was to slomark; not directly to the report. And yes he did say Hispanic. And being a gangbanger does mean illegal/criminal. And quite possibly an illegal alien. My post was sarcastic (partially).


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Yes, being a known gang member of a recognized gang is illegal in California. Maybe slomark didn’t know that when these “gangbangers” called him names and didn’t call LE, then again maybe it was just pure conjecture on his part, or the incident didn’t even happen, who knows, right?


Come on! You’d have to forgive me if your “partial sarcasm” didn’t come off, to me anyway, of race based prejudice. No proof of any crime being committed, even the gangbanger stuff, no mention of citizenship status, no mention in the article of anything other than hate crimes being on an up-tick in Cali’ and you come up with “illegal alien” out of all of that?


I guess in the current world of race based fear your “quite possibly” has replaced “proof positive”? How convenient for those who have an agenda, an agenda that appears to be race based or racist…


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Slomark No that’s not a hate crime. They’re not illegal aliens or criminals. They’re just “proactive new visitors forging ahead of their culture”. They’re just “morally challenged victims of the system”. How dare anyone stand up and tell truth. Ha ha ha.


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I don’t get your post sweethome, not at all. No place in the report does it allude to any race in particular, other than saying Hispanics and Jews had a sharp rise in hate crimes directed at them. slomark only said it was Hispanic gangbangers and not illegal immigrant gangbangers that yelled racial slurs his way (why he didn’t report it to the police I don’t know, and how he could tell they were gangbangers from a distance is something LE would like to know how to do, as they use defining marks, tattoos and other such stuff for identification, and not ESP). So where did you come up with your criminal illegal gangbangers?


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Kettle… you make absolutely no sense. Are you on medication?


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So you have no examples of “the attacks on conservatives” but personally attack me?


If you read my comment I was not talking about you, but you are making my point for me.


“ad hominem. You attacked someones character or personal traits in an attempt to undermine their argument.

Ad hominem attacks can take the form of overtly attacking somebody, or more subtly casting doubt on their character or personal attributes as a way to discredit their argument. The result of an ad hom attack can be to undermine someone’s case without actually having to engage with it.”


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Of course not. If you are white you do not qualify for hate crimes. As usual you can only give and not receive.


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” If you are white you do not qualify for hate crimes.” You mean as a victim, right?


The problem with that line of thinking is a crime designated as a “hate crime” was first designated against a group of African-American males that went out and attacked a white teenager after watching “Mississippi Burning” (Mitchell v. Wisconsin). Also, consider the fact that African-Americans are more likely to be either a victim or a perpetrator of a “hate crime” than any other race. AND, if you consider that African-American’s make up less than 13% of the population and over 25% of hate crimes report an African-American as it’s perpetrator, it ain’t as cut and dry as “whites do not qualify [as the victim?].


Maybe, just maybe it’s because whites are far more likely to act out there irrational fears based around their presumed rights, either by manifest destiny or divine decree, than a person of color is. Maybe in the current environment, where our country is being led by a racist, one that has ordained and instigated violence, it shouldn’t be so surprising that the “Happiest Place On Earth” would experience it as well, right?


Maybe some day we can get past color, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation and the myriad of other labels that seem to divide us more than unite us and get down to the fact we are all just human beings, and when you hate on one of us you hate on all of us!


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Do left wing attacks on conservatives count? Probably not.


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Criticism of the conservatives policy’s are not attacks. For example the Russia loving idiots tariffs that are raising prices on everything Americans buy. That is fair game and very American to criticize.


Feel free to post some links about the poor con’s being attacked, like when they ask for permits from little kids, and so on.


More to the point, in SLO I see mistreatment of minorities on a regular basis, but not cons.


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“Many of the incidents do not result in charges being filed in court.”


Because they cannot be proven?


I would hope there is some type of sanity in hate-crime law. Specifically I don’t understand the idea of making a so-called victim class a protected class; it would seem to me to make matters worse.


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I don’t think it’s so much a “so-called” protected class as it is a much needed protected characteristic if history teaches us anything, combining a prosecutable crime that is perpetrated on a person characteristics based on gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or other characteristics.


As long as anyone uses any characteristic of another human being as a reason to either hinder or outright deny his or her civil rights, and or commits a crime against them, how could it be seen as anything but hate. You wouldn’t do that to someone you like, right? Would it be easier to accept it if it was reworded to say “characteristic based crime”?


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Some Hispanic gangbangers at Pismo called me some offensive racial things last week. Does that count?


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