1999 reported hate crimes jump 12 percent in Calif.

LOS ANGELES -- Hate crimes increased in California by 12 percent in 1999, according to a report from the state's attorney general.

The shooting rampage at the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills last August and June 1999 arson attacks on three Sacramento-area synagogues received the most media attention, but the largest number of hate-crime victims were African Americans.

In a breakdown on the causes of the reported 1,962 hate crimes, which affected 2,500 victims, 60 percent were based on race or ethnicity, 22 percent on sexual orientation and 17 percent on religion.

Anti-Semitic incidents were classified under "religion" and represented by far the largest proportion of crimes in that category.

The findings support the results of an Anti-Defamation League study, released in April, which showed a 20 percent increase in anti-Semitic hate crimes in 1999.

The current report was released July 27 by California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, who cautioned that the 12 percent increase may just indicate a greater alertness by individuals and police in reporting such incidents.

A similar point was stressed by ADL's Los Angeles-area regional director, David Lehrer, who said that while the publicity from the two high-profile attacks on Jewish institutions may have prompted some copycat crimes, they perhaps encouraged others to report hate-motivated crimes.

In the Bay Area, Karen Zatz, assistant director of the ADL's Central Pacific region, gave the statistics an optimistic spin.

"Their statistics could obviously reflect a rise in hate crimes," said Zatz, "but they also could reflect a recognition that there are recourses available.

"I think in the past, people were much less willing to see inalienable traits (i.e., race, class, gender, orientation) as motivating criminal acts."

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of Los Angeles' Simon Wiesenthal Center, sees the explosion of hate sites on the Web as a motivating factor in encouraging and empowering individual bigots.

When the Wiesenthal Center started tracking hate sites on the Internet in April 1995, at the time of the Oklahoma City bombing, there was only one, according to the center's researchers. That figure has now ballooned to more than 2,500.