According to data collected by Los Angeles County, Black people in Long Beach were victimized by hate crimes more than any other group in the city during 2018 and 2019.
“We predicted that in 2020 there was going to be a record low number of hate crimes, because everyone was staying at home and there were many, many fewer opportunities for people to interact at all,” said Marshall Wong of the LA County Human Relations Commission. “Sadly, that is not the case. It appears as though we had received, perhaps more hate crime reports in 2020 than we had in the past decade.”
The largest number, 38%, targeted African Americans, Wong said in regards to Long Beach hate crimes in 2019.
The same was true of LA County in 2019, where African Americans were disproportionately targeted for racist hate crimes, Wong told the Long Beach Human Relations Commission on Thursday, July 8.
“African Americans were, again, the largest group of victims. Even though African Americans comprise only about 9% of LA County residents, they made up almost half of racial hate crime victims,” Wong said.
In 2018 there were 12 hate crimes reported in Long Beach, rising to 16 in 2019.
In both 2018 and 2019, six hate crimes were committed against African Americans each year, with 12 committed overall.
In one incident that occurred on March 3, 2019 an African American woman was working at her job as a security guard for a shopping center, when she approached a white couple that had double parked another vehicle. When asked to move their vehicle, the white female of the couple began to yell a racial slur repeatedly at the security guard.
The white male of the couple exited the vehicle and yelled “You [expletive] [expletive]! I’ll [expletive] you up, you [expletive] Black [expletive]!”
He then proceeded to punch the victim in her forearm.
The perpetrator then got back in his vehicle and began circling the parking lot, yelling a racial slur at the victim each time he passed her.
The victim recorded the incident on her cell phone and reported it to LBPD. A witness also corroborated her account.
In another incident that occurred on April 30, 2019 two Black 14-year-olds were sitting on their grandmother’s porch when they were harassed and threatened by a group of three Latino males, ages 14, 16 and 21.
According to a written statement shown during Wong’s presentation, the suspects threatened and yelled racial slurs at the two Black children.
One suspect then used his hands to break the front gate of their grandmother’s home.
The children became frightened and ran inside the house to take shelter.
One of the suspects walked up to the closed front door and punched it so hard he shattered a glass pane.
During his presentation, Wong said the number of hate crimes with evidence of white supremacist ideology rose from zero to four from 2018 to 2019.
“Most frequently this is the use of swastikas or other hate symbols and graffiti,” Wong said.
Wong said that the County would be finished compiling hate crime data from 2020 by November to December of 2021.
Victims of hate crimes in Long Beach can contact the Long Beach Police Department at their nonemergency line (562) 435-6711 or call 911.