LOS ANGELES (CNS) – Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday passed a motion aimed at improving the city’s systems for people who need to report hate crimes to stop the AAPI hatred.
The motion was tabled by Councilor Nithya Raman, who said ahead of the vote that although Los Angeles police record hate crimes and incidents of hate, comparative data from nonprofits shows a large gap in reporting.
“This means that the LAPD’s numbers are likely to be drastically outnumbered and that is preventing us from making better policies, which is preventing us from allocating resources that actually target hate crimes,” Raman added.
Reported violent crimes against Asian Americans doubled nationwide between 2015 and 2018, and the LAPD reported an increase in Los Angeles in 2020 when 15 hate crimes were reported against the Asia-American Pacific islander community, compared with seven in 2019. In By 2020 the city has had a total of 24 reported hate incidents and hate crimes against Asian Americans.
Meanwhile, in just seven months of 2020, from March 19 to October 28, the nonprofit Stop AAPI Hate reported 245 hate crimes and incidents in Los Angeles County.
“These loopholes may be due in part to fears of law enforcement reporting, a lack of awareness of the rights and resources granted to victims, and barriers to accessing official reporting sources,” the motion said. “In the past, the only direct reporting mechanism for hate crimes and incidents in the City of Los Angeles has been the Los Angeles Police Department.”
The request instructed the Civil Rights and Human Rights Department and Information Technology Agency, with the assistance of the LAPD, to report to the City Council within 60 days such as:
- Improving access to reporting hate incidents through technology, e.g. B. via a dedicated mobile app or the My311LA app
- 311 improved data collection to streamline hate incident reporting and routing to relevant services
- Create a data analysis tool for hate-related data that will be accessed by the Department of Civil Rights and Human Rights
- integrate various entry points for reporting into a uniform system
The departments will also report on the resources needed to implement the improvements.
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