Los Angeles County closed 2024 with one of the worst hate crime years on record, and the story is not just about numbers creeping up or down�it is about who is being targeted, where it is happening, and what that says about the climate people are living in every day.?
A year of near-record hate
In 2024, Los Angeles County documented 1,355 hate crime victims, just one percent below the all-time high reached in 2023, making this the second-highest year in the report�s 44-year history. Nearly seven out of ten reported hate crimes were violent, with simple assaults rising and, for the first time, surpassing non?violent vandalism as the most common offense. Behind each percentage point is a clear message: the county is not dealing with isolated flare?ups, but a sustained environment where bias, threat, and physical harm are regular features of public life.?
Race, ethnicity, and national origin remained the dominant motive, accounting for 48% of all hate crimes and reaching a record 678 victims. Sexual orientation and religion followed, each at 18% of cases, with gender identity and expression making up another 11%�a category that also broke multiple records.?
Black Angelenos carry a disproportionate burden
Once again, African Americans bore the brunt of reported hate crimes. Although they make up about nine percent of the county�s population, they represented 51% of racial hate crime victims, with 345 anti?Black crimes�the highest number ever recorded. Most of these attacks happened in public spaces, homes, and businesses, and more than seven in ten were violent. Latino suspects were most frequently identified in anti?Black cases, followed by white suspects, a pattern that underscores how anti?Blackness cuts across communities rather than being confined to one group.?
Latino/a communities faced the second?largest share of racial hate crimes, with 143 reported cases, just shy of their all?time high. Nearly half of those involved explicitly anti?Mexican slurs, and two?thirds of all anti?immigrant hate crimes in 2024 were directed at Latino/as. While anti?immigrant incidents dropped overall, they remained heavily racialized, highly violent, and clustered in homes, public places, and workplaces.?
Asian Americans saw a sharp decline in reported hate crimes�from 79 to 52�but that still represents the fourth?highest level the County has ever tracked. Anti?Asian cases remained predominantly violent, and almost a quarter involved �go back to your country�?type rhetoric, signaling that xenophobia continues to drive a significant share of these attacks. At the same time, anti?Middle Eastern and anti?Israeli crimes surged to their highest levels on record, part of a broader spike tied to conflict in the Middle East.?
Conflict overseas, consequences in classrooms and streets
Crimes explicitly referencing the Middle East conflict increased from 64 to 81, the largest number since tracking began in 2007. Sixty percent of those cases were violent, and nearly half occurred in school settings�a massive jump from just four school?based conflict cases the year before to 39 in 2024. Palestinians, Jews, Israelis, Middle Easterners, and Muslims were the most frequently targeted groups in these incidents, illustrating how a geopolitical crisis translated into everyday harassment, threats, and assaults in Los Angeles County neighborhoods and campuses.?
More broadly, school?related hate crimes reached an all?time high of 147 incidents, now representing 11% of all hate crimes countywide. Most of these involved race, followed by religion and sexual orientation, and nearly half were violent. From elementary classrooms to university quads, the data shows young people absorbing and reenacting the biases and conflicts that surround them, often with little filter or restraint.?
LGBTQ and gender?based hate at dangerous levels
Crimes motivated by sexual orientation remained near historic highs at 255 cases�second only to the peak reached in 2023. Gay men continued to be the primary targets, making up 72% of these cases, with more than eight in ten anti?gay incidents classified as violent. Latino victims were the largest group in sexual?orientation crimes, followed by white and Black victims, and most of these attacks occurred in homes or public spaces.?
Gender?based hate crime was one of the clearest areas of escalation. There were 152 gender?motivated hate crimes in 2024, the highest number ever recorded, and 91% were violent. Anti?transgender crimes hit a record 102 cases, with an almost staggering 95% of them involving violence�often beatings, threats with weapons, and street assaults. Anti?female hate crimes jumped 75% to 35 cases, also a record, and crimes targeting non?binary people rose to 15, more than tripling in a single year. Taken together, these numbers signal that trans, non?binary, and women�especially transgender women of color�are facing a concentrated and dangerous wave of hostility in both public and private spaces.?
Religion: fewer cases, but historically high targeting
Religiously motivated hate crimes declined from 297 to 259, but they still represent the second?largest category and remain at historically elevated levels. Four out of five religious hate crimes targeted Jewish people, and although anti?Jewish incidents dropped from their 2023 peak, the 2024 count is still the second?highest ever in this report. Anti?Muslim and anti?Scientologist crimes both reached record highs, a reminder that the pressure on religious communities is neither narrow nor confined to one faith.?
About 39% of religious hate crimes were violent, and most of the rest were vandalism and intimidation�graffiti, threats, and harassment that send a consistent message of exclusion and fear. White supremacist ideology showed up in 14% of religious cases, almost all of them directed at Jews, often through swastikas and other Nazi symbols.?
Fewer white supremacist and gang cases, but violence remains central
One of the few areas where the County saw sharp declines was in crimes involving white supremacist ideology and gang involvement. White supremacist cases fell 42%, from 212 to 123, and gang?related hate crimes dropped 75%, from 61 to 15. Still, these cases remained disproportionately violent, with white supremacist incidents heavily focused on Jews and Black residents, and gang?related crimes primarily aimed at Black and LGBTQ victims. Even when the counts fall, the nature of these crimes�organized, symbolic, often public�means their impact extends far beyond the individual victim.?
Data, response, and the pushback against hate
The report is clear on one more point: what is recorded is only a fraction of what actually happens. The Commission screened more than 3,200 hate?related events in 2024, ultimately confirming 1,265 events involving 1,355 hate crime victims under California law. Federal estimates suggest that at least half of violent hate crimes never get reported, and non?violent incidents are even more likely to stay in the shadows.?
Still, Los Angeles County is not treating this as a passive trend line. Through LA vs Hate, the County is expanding reporting channels, care coordination, and community?based prevention campaigns, generating hundreds of service referrals and reaching more than 120,000 people at events and activations last year. At the same time, the District Attorney�s office received or initiated 181 hate crime cases, filing 60% as hate crimes and securing convictions while additional cases remain pending.?
The picture that emerges from the 2024 report is stark but instructive: hate crimes in Los Angeles County are high, deeply concentrated on a handful of communities, increasingly violent, and spilling into homes, transit lines, schools, and digital spaces. Yet the infrastructure to track, respond to, and push back against that hate is also stronger than it has ever been, signaling that while the problem is persistent, the resolve to confront it is growing just as quickly.? See the entire report here