Orange County agencies — including the OC Board of Supervisors — should improve how hate crimes and incidents are reported and addressed, the Orange County Grand Jury said after a review of local responses and programs.
Concerns over the effectiveness of local efforts to combat hate and countywide reporting systems led to the study, the grand jury said in its recently released report, “Hate: What is Orange County Doing About It?”
The review looked at hate crime data from 2023 and grand jury members conducted various surveys, field visits and interviews of city officials and community leaders over the last year.
In 2023, Orange County reported 95 hate crimes, a decrease from 112 in 2022 and the first decline in hate crimes since 2016. However, the Anti-Defamation League said it documented 88 antisemitic incidents alone in the Orange County/Long Beach region in 2023, an increase from 55 in 2022.
“Official data may underrepresent the true scope of the problem,” the grand jury surmised.
Incomplete reports from at least four cities and the exclusion of non-criminal hate incidents contributed to discrepancies in Orange County data, the grand jury said. Barriers to reporting — such as fear of retaliation and distrust in law enforcement — have also led to underreporting.
The grand jury is recommending the creation of a centralized reporting portal or mechanism for local law enforcement agencies and nonprofit organizations to use to streamline the reporting process and improve data capture.
Sign up for Down Ballot, our Southern California politics email newsletter. Subscribe here.Several of the grand jury’s recommendations are targeted at the Board of Supervisors and its seven-member Human Relations Commission, which oversees issues of prejudice and discrimination within the county. The size of the committee was shrunk last year, meetings became less frequent and law enforcement and city representation largely removed.
In June 2024, the supervisors also ended the county’s partnership with Groundswell, a nonprofit organization that secured grants and funding for human relations programs not directly supported by the board.
The decisions by the supervisors “raised concerns about the county’s commitment to addressing systemic bias, hate crimes, and discrimination,” the grand jury wrote.
Second District Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento said he would raise the commission’s role with his colleagues.
“I fear we have limited the capacity of this commission to help provide a safe forum for the community,” he said in a statement. “I will be bringing the need to strengthen the work of the commission back to the board and hope that my colleagues will be able to support addressing hate in our culture.”
The grand jury argues the commission should be reinstated to its previous size of 11 members and scope.
The commission should also report semiannually to the board starting at the end of August, and form a coalition of community leaders and city and law enforcement representatives by the end of September, the grand jury recommends.
The last recommendation for the supervisors from the grand jury is to be prepared to allocate funding to the Orange County District Attorney’s Office and OC Asian Pacific Islanders Community Alliance, which are facing funding cuts in the next two years, but have shown successes with hate crime prevention.
In 2024, the OCDA received a $1.4 million federal grant to help prosecute hate crimes and work with community partners on outreach to targeted communities. The grant expires in 2027.
Currently, the Human Relations Commission is working on creating a credible data collection infrastructure to standardize hate crime reporting, Fifth District Supervisor Katrina Foley said in response to the grand jury’s recommendation that the Sheriff’s Department and nonprofits create a streamlined reporting process.
“Their recommendation is what we’re doing, but that takes time,” Foley said in an interview. “The first step is to establish a credible methodology. The second step is to move into a growth period.”
And returning the seven-member commission to its original size is an “arbitrary number,” she said. “There’s no magic number of how to respond and to stamp out hate in the community.”
The district attorney is “extremely concerned” that the jury’s recommendation to create a reporting portal within the Sheriff’s Department will only create additional layers of reporting, instead of actually streamlining the process, OCDA spokesperson Kimberly Edds said.
It is the District Attorney’s Office that reports all hate crimes to the California Department of Justice, she said. And, county prosecutors determine whether something can be prosecuted as a hate crime or hate incident.
Also, different organizations might have their own definition of what constitutes a hate crime, and report crimes or incidents that do not fall under the California Department of Justice definition, Edds said. This could lead to overreporting and confusion during the reporting process, Edds said.
“We are working with the county CEO’s office to respond to the grand jury recommendations in a way that highlights the necessity of accurate and complete reporting of hate crimes in a way that does not add additional bureaucracy and unnecessary confusion,” OCDA officials said in a statement.
In addition to being tasked by the grand jury to create its own reporting mechanism, the OC Sheriff’s Department should increase its educational and outreach efforts, especially when it comes to encouraging the reporting of hate crimes, the grand jury recommended.
The Sheriff’s Department should also expand its Interfaith Advisory Council to more faith communities, including multiple congregations, and work more closely with Black- and Jewish-led organizations, two demographics most impacted by hate crimes in Orange County, the jury said in its report.
Only two out of three schools in Orange County collect data on hate crimes and incidents that occur on their campus, a grand jury survey of school districts reported. Just over half provide formal training on hate crimes to their staff, the grand jury said, and very few receive funding specifically for addressing hate crimes.
“Hate is a learned behavior. Early intervention is essential for promoting tolerance and respect,” the jury wrote in its findings, recommending the OC Department of Education develop better databases tracking incidents.
The jury is also recommending that the county education department provide a centralized database of resources and programs for K-12 schools and focus on age-appropriate curriculum in kindergarten through fifth grade to address the problem of hate crimes in school.
The full grand jury report, including all of its findings and recommendations, can be found at ocgrandjury.org.
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