Note: This article first appeared on Crosstown and is shared with their permission in partnership with Los Angeleno. You can subscribe to Crosstown for crime, traffic and air quality news here.
The department now uses 35 separate codes to chart instances of racism and bias.
On June 3, just after midnight, a 33-year-old Black man was hit by an assailant wielding a pipe in Los Angeles’ Fairfax neighborhood.
The Los Angeles Police Department concluded that the attack was racially motivated.
It was entered into the records with the code “1514,” signifying the motivation for the aggravated assault: “Bias: Anti-Black or African American.” This was one of 50 instances recorded by the LAPD during the first six months of the year that specifically targeted Black people.
Just 18 months earlier, the official record of the incident would have been much more generic: “hate crime.”
But beginning last year, the LAPD revamped the way it records hate crimes and hate incidents that take place in the city.