California accounted for one of every five hate crimes reported in the country, according to the annual FBI report released Oct. 25. Overall, hate crimes in the United States were at about the same level in 2003 as in the preceding year, and well below the record figures of 2001
Anti-Semitic incidents were down a fraction, with 927 in 2003 compared to 931 in 2002. But, warned Jonathan Bernstein, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, anti-Semitic hate crimes made up the vast majority of all religiously motivated crimes.
Among the 1,300 hate crimes motivated by religious bias, 69 percent were anti-Jewish and 11.5 percent were anti-Muslim.
Rather than be comforted by reduced numbers, however, Bernstein saw a problem with the reporting of hate crimes.
“We still need to do a lot of work on reporting. San Francisco does a very good job. Other places in Northern California do a really horrible job — they don’t take it seriously or they don’t have the staff to do it,” he said.
One disturbing development is the failure to enact an expanded anti-
hate crime measure, despite both Senate and House votes in September in
favor of such a provision, said
Abraham Foxman, the national ADL director.
One month later, the Republican leadership of the House stripped the provision from a pending defense bill, said Foxman.
As in previous years, violence and vandalism against black citizens and institutions, representing more than one-third of all hate crimes nationally, topped the statistics.
Tom Tugend writes for the Jerusalem Post news service and Joe Eskenazi is a staff writer for j.