SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Most crime rates declined across California in 2014, including hate crimes and homicides, the state attorney general’s office said Wednesday.
Hate crimes offenses were down nearly 9 percent last year, the office said in one of several new reports. Crimes based upon the victims’ sexual orientation dropped more than 13 percent, to 187 last year, while hate crimes targeting a particular race, ethnicity or national origin decreased nearly 16 percent to 412 statewide.
The report comes amid a heightened focus on hate crimes after a white gunman was charged with murder in the slayings of nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, last month.
California has seen a long-term decline in hate crimes, which are down nearly 46 percent since 2005.
Blacks were the most common target, accounting for about a third of hate crimes in the last decade. Gays and Jews were also frequently targeted, the reports said.
Attorney General Kamala Harris, a Democrat who is running for the U.S. Senate next year, released the report without comment. Kristin Ford, a spokeswoman for Harris, declined to immediately comment on the reports.
Separately, Harris reported that most major crimes also declined in 2014, three years after California made sweeping changes to its criminal justice system by requiring that most lower-level offenders serve their sentences in county jails instead of state prisons.
The homicide rate dropped more than 4 percent, while robberies were down 10 percent. However, the aggravated assault rate increased 2.4 percent in 2014 after dropping nearly 7 percent in 2013. Property crime was down nearly 8 percent, led by a drop in burglaries.
There were nearly 9,400 rapes reported last year, but Harris said the information cannot be compared with prior years because the definition used by the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program changed in 2013 to include more sexual assaults.
Guns accounted for about 70 percent of murder weapons last year.
Even amid increased attention to recent shootings of unarmed minorities by police, citizen complaints against police dropped to their lowest level since 1990.
Local law enforcement reported 152 homicides they deemed justifiable last year, 116 by peace officers and 36 by private citizens. Five peace officers were killed in the line of duty.
The roughly 1.2 million arrests last year were the lowest since 1969, the office said.
The reports rely on information from local police and district attorneys.
