Police Say No Hate Crimes Reported in Pasadena This Year

Image of a swastika painted on a Pasadena church and reported to police Wednesday, October 17, 2018. Police at the time said they were considering the incident a hate crime. Historically, hate crimes have remained low in Pasadena, and none has been reported in 2020. (Photo submitted by a Pasadena Now reader)

With outrage growing nationwide over a reported increase in hate crimes targeting Asian Americans, police say no such crimes have been reported in Pasadena this year.

Reacting to reports of increased incidents of hate targeting Asian Americans throughout the country, the Pasadena City Council on Monday adopted a resolution condemning hate and hate crimes in all forms.

The San Gabriel Valley Police Chiefs’ Association issued a similar statement this week.

But, fortunately, with the first three months of 2021 nearly over, no hate crimes had been reported in the city as of Wednesday, said Pasadena police Lt. William Grisafe.

“Pasadena has very few hate crime-related incidents each year,” Grisafe said. “With the recent concerns about the safety of the Asian community, we are fortunate we have not had any reported incidents of hate toward that particular community.”

Pasadena police investigated five hate crimes in 2020 involving at least seven victims, Grisafe said. Two of the victims were Black, one was Asian, one was white, one was Latino, one was Jewish, and one was of an unknown race.

2019 saw a total of four reported hate crimes involving five victims, according to Grisafe. One targeted unidentified members of the Asian community, while the others targeted a Latino victim, one targeted two members of the LGBT community, and one targeted a victim of an unknown race.

Police in 2018 investigated three incidents as potential hate crimes, the lieutenant said.

Father Bob Gaestel points to some of the damage inside Pasadena’s Church of the Angels after a January 13, 2018 incident. Investigated as a hate crime, the suspect was ultimately charged only with vandalism and arson. (Image courtesy Church of the Angels via Facebook)

A man burned several local churches, although no hate crime charges were ultimately filed in that case, police said.

Victims of the other two reported hate crimes in 2018 were Black females.

The Police Department “classifies 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 association with a person or group with one or more of these perceived characteristics,” according to Grisafe.

Hate crimes can be filed either as a separate charge or as an enhancement to another crime, he explained.

But reporting and records are not uniform throughout the state, he added.

“Also, [The California Department of Justice] tracks hate crimes, and when law enforcement agencies report such crimes, the DOJ will review to determine if they meet their threshold,” Grisafe said. “Unfortunately, sometimes there is a discrepancy between what the [district attorney’s] office determines is a hate crime and what the DOJ says is a hate crime.”

According to the 2019 Los Angeles County Hate Crime Report, which is the most recently published report, 524 total hate crimes were reported in the county in 2019, compared with 523 in 2018.

Hate crimes against Asian categories grew from 17 in 2018 to 22 in 2019, the report states.

An analysis by the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at Cal State, San Bernardino, looking at hate crime statics in America’s most populous cities found hate crimes targeting Asian victims in Los Angeles more than doubled from seven in 2019 to 15 in 2020.

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