SANTA ANA — Skinheads and other white supremacists were responsible for the majority of hate crimes in Orange County in 1995, committing 102 of 175 crimes and targeting African Americans and Jews in the largest numbers, according to a report by the Orange County Human Relations Commission.
The study released Thursday said that while the number of reported hate crimes in the county declined slightly, the number of crimes against African Americans rose from 36 to 44, accounting for 25% of all hate crimes.
Commission officials attributed the increase in part to white anger at the acquittal of O.J. Simpson on charges of murdering his ex-wife and her friend. They recounted hostile phone calls to African American residents after the verdict.
"What we generally see are three types of hate crime: Those that are mission driven, those that are reactive and those that really involved social or peer pressure," said Rusty Kennedy, executive director of the Human Relations Commission. "The reactive ones are generally about what's happening in the world and people are afraid of, say, immigrants because [Prop.] 187 is in the news and then they do something."
The number of hate crimes against Asians rose from 11 to 19, but the number of crimes against Jews declined from 53 to 36. In 1994, Jews were the most frequent targets of hate crimes in the county.
The incidents--which include verbal and physical assaults, vandalism and racist mailings--were taken from police reports. They include:
* The assault on an African American male in Mission Viejo, who was approached by four white suspects, one of whom pulled a handgun, used a racial epithet and said "This is white power," according to police. Another suspect hit him on the head.
* At a high school in Huntington Beach, two skinheads cornered a Latina student in the bathroom and beat her while chanting white power slogans.
* While surfing in Dana Point, a Chinese American was punched in the face by another surfer who said "This is a white beach," and used a racial slur.
The district attorney's office reviewed just 10 of the hate crimes, because in the vast majority of cases, police had no suspects, Kennedy said. Four were prosecuted; three were rejected with no criminal charges; three more were pursued, but not as hate crimes because of a lack of evidence.
