Hate crimes rise in Fresno region. Why, and who are most frequently targeted victims?

Fresno County and neighboring counties in central California have seen a significant increase in reported hate crime in recent years, with Valley law enforcement agencies together reporting in 2022 the highest number in eight years.

Blacks were the most frequently reported victims, locally and across the state, but few groups escaped being targeted as crimes also affected whites, gay and transgender people, according to recently released state data.

The numbers have been trending higher, but what’s less certain is why.

“It’s hard to know whether more crimes are happening or if people are feeling more empowered to report,” said Peter E. Smith, a former professor at Fresno Pacific University who was the school’s program director for peacemaking and conflict resolution studies.. “It’s probably a little bit of both.”

“Hate crimes are under-reported historically, systemically,” he added. “I think pretty much everyone agrees that even if there’s an uptick, it probably means there is still a lot not being reported.”

Smith told The Fresno Bee in a telephone interview that “it’s one of those things that if people don’t have confidence that law enforcement is going to be able to do anything about it or that their voice will be heard, then there may be reluctance to report in the first place. ”

Almost 200 people were victims of 166 separate hate-crime incidents reported in Fresno County during the eight-year period. They were reportedly subjected to crimes ranging from property damage and vandalism to physical assault, rape and murder.

Across the five-county region of Fresno, Kings, Madera, Merced and Tulare counties, more than 240 offenses were cataloged as hate crimes by police and sheriff’s investigators, affecting 272 individual victims from 2015 through 2022.

The figures are included in data reported to the state by Valley police departments and sheriffs’ offices and released recently by the state Department of Justice.

What the data reveal

In Fresno County and Valleywide, race or ethnicity was the most common motivation for hate crimes in each of the past eight years. Blacks were the most frequently targeted demographic segment with 88 incidents in the region since 2015, including 23 in 2022 across the five-county region.

Others among the most-targeted groups Valleywide were:

• Gay men, 26 cases since 2015, including six in 2022.

• Hispanic or Latino residents, 22 cases since 2015, including three in 2022.

• White residents, 17 cases since 2015, including five in 2022.

• Transgender persons, 10 cases since 2015, including two in 2022.

According to a bulletin issued to law enforcement agencies throughout California in late June, state law defines a hate crime as “a criminal act committed, in whole or in part, because of one or more of the following actual or perceived characteristics of the victim: disability, gender, nationality, race or ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation; or because of the person’s association with a person or group with one or more of these actual or perceived characteristics.”

One of the most shocking hate crimes in Fresno County in recent years was the shooting deaths of three men, all of whom were white, in April 2017, in a rampage near downtown Fresno. The gunman, a Black man, reportedly told police that he intentionally set out to kill white people. In addition to those race-motivated slayings, the gunman shot and killed an unarmed security guard several days earlier at a Motel 6 in central Fresno.

Over recent years, several churches have been targeted by vandals, incidents considered hate crimes, some because of their religious positions and in at least one case because the church publicly welcomes and supports the LGBTQ community.

Statewide, more than 2,100 hate crimes were reported in 2022, representing a 20.4% increase over 2021. In the five-county central San Joaquin Valley region, however, the uptick was even more dramatic – almost 32.6% as incidents climbed from 43 in 2021 to 57 in 2022.

Black people were the most frequent target of reported hate crimes across California, and the data show a one-year surge of 27.1%. from 513 in 2021 to 652 in 2022. Hate crimes reported against Asians dropped from 247 in 2021 to 140 in 2022, a decrease of 43.3%.

Hate crimes rooted in a bias based on sexual orientation rose by almost 30% statewide, from 303 cases in 2021 to 391 in 2022.

“The alarming increases in crimes committed against Black, LGBTQ+ and Jewish people for the second year in a row illustrates the need for our communities to join together unified against hate,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said. “It takes all of us working together to combat extremism and foster a safe and inclusive environment for all Californians.”

For Fresno County, the increase was much more modest – from 23 overall hate crime incidents in 2021 to 26 in 2022, or about 5%.

Crimes rooted in bias based on race or ethnicity amounted to 16 cases in 2022 in Fresno County, and 105 from 2015 through 2022. More than half of all of those crimes were against Black victims.

What’s behind the increase in hateful acts?

While recent years are reflecting increases in hate crimes, Smith pointed out that such offenses against racial or social minorities are hardly new in American history.

“Historically, I would suggest that the U.S. has a history of being built on hate crimes – the genocide of the Native Americans, the history of slavery and segregation,” he told The Bee. “That’s all there, and we still really have not had a national reckoning with understanding our own history. That’s politically some of the backdrop.”

Smith added that the U.S. saw “marked spikes in attacks” against Muslims or others of Middle Eastern ancestry – or people who ‘looked’ Middle Eastern – and against Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“In some ways it’s no wonder that we continue to see the patterns continuing to pop up, maybe with more force at certain times than other times, but I think the recurrence isn’t a surprise when we really haven’t come to terms with our history,” Smith added.

Smith and Matthew Jendian, a professor of sociology at California State University, Fresno, said they believe the increasingly divisive political climate of recent years, marked by inflammatory rhetoric by prominent elected officials and commentators, has helped to fuel resentment among people who commit hate crimes.

“When leaders talk disparagingly about certain groups, when they target certain groups, putting down some groups so they can feel better about themselves – that certainly, very easily translates to followers who say, ‘Hey, we can talk that way, too,” Smith said. And those followers may go a step further. “They say, ‘Guess what? The leader who talks that way, he probably can’t actually do some of the things we can do because he’s in the spotlight, but we can actually carry out some of those things and act upon what’s being talked about.’ ”

Jendian said it’s hardly coincidental that divisive and hateful rhetoric has been on the rise “and seems much more pronounced since 2015 and the announcement of Donald Trump’s candidacy for the U.S. presidency.”

“I want to be clear that Donald Trump is not responsible for the existence of hate,” Jendian added. “Hate toward groups of people who are different in whatever way – race, sex, immigration status, etc. – has always been around. However, the openness with which that hate was expressed moved from the backstage to the frontstage … and the norms of what was acceptable to say ‘in public’ … shifted in significant ways.”

When those sentiments move from hateful speech – protected under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution – to actual hate crimes against people or property, it reflects a substitute for power by people who feel their own way of life or their place in society is threatened, Smith and Jendian said.

“In many respects, America has been and will likely almost always be segregated in different ways, but the cross-over and increase in proximity to people of diverse backgrounds is happening – particularly in the larger urban areas,” Jendian said. “We live in a multicultural society, a multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-religious, multi-class society, and there is no way to make that work without respect. And, yet, this value and behavior of respect is in short supply”

Indeed, what’s being exhibited now is disrespect for and blame against others, Smith suggested.

“So there’s this sense of justification that’s there that makes someone feel like they’re in the right and they’re defending what is right and good and true, even though they’re making life miserable for someone else,” he said.

“At times when tensions begin to build and people begin to feel this sense of uncertainty and disorder, often the easiest and cheapest move is to find scapegoats,” Smith said. “We can find a common enemy, we can find a bit more unity and stability in the short term, the promise of that. Of course it never pays off long-term.”

“I would even use the language of addiction,” he said, “in the sense that we’re ‘addicted’ to scapegoats.”