Violent clashes and arrests as a result of political intolerance increased in 2016 on California college campuses and at political rallies, as did far-left extremism that could lead to more civil conflicts, researchers concluded in a report presented last week to Los Angeles County officials.

Frayed race relations, demographic changes and political divisions along with distrust in institutions and the democratic process all contributed to the rise of hate crimes and extremism, said Brian Levin, a terrorism expert and professor at Cal State San Bernardino the report’s author. He presented it last week during a quarterly meeting of Los Angeles County’s Network Against Hate Crime.

“The hard left now poses a distinct threat to the maintenance of free speech on some California campuses, like U.C. Berkeley, owing to their swarming of campuses featuring bigoted or controversial speakers,” Levin said in his report.

Politics and a heated election year also led to more hate crimes and civil conflicts in some of California’s largest cities last year compared to 2015, he added.

Long Beach isn’t immune

Numbers provided to the Press-Telegram by police show that Long Beach also recently saw a recent spike in hate crimes.

Eight were reported in the first two months of 2017. That was a dramatic uptick from 2016 when detectives only investigated eight hate crimes during the whole year, according to the Long Beach Police Department.

There were 12 hate crimes reported in Long Beach during 2015, according to the department.

Long Beach police said the crimes this year included bomb threats at local Jewish centers, a car spray-painted with “derogatory comments regarding the victim’s sexuality,” and a driver who may have tried to hit two Hispanic women with her car while yelling racial slurs.

It’s unclear if that uptick has continued. Up-to-date numbers weren’t immediately available.

Police have said they couldn’t pinpoint an exact reason for the increase.

• RELATED STORY: Long Beach sees spike in hate crimes so far this year

Cal State Long Beach has also see a recent spate of hate-related incidents.

Three times this year, racist fliers promoting white supremacy or white nationalism have appeared on campus.

Most recently, in April, someone pasted up posters featuring swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans.

“It’s certainly safe to say that there’s been an uptick in the distribution of illegal, hateful posters on campus,” Terri Carbaugh, a spokeswoman for the university, said at the time.

‘Pre-choreographed’ violence

Last June, 14 people were injured and 106 people faced charges as a result of a clash in Sacramento between groups who describe themselves as Alt-Right, skinheads and the self-described anti-fascist group Antifa.

Assaults, vandalism, and derogatory remarks based on politics are not considered hate crimes. But those far left groups should be watched closely, Levin warned.

“Armed anti-racist, black bloc, Antifa, and other hard left partisans, like the Bay Area group By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), not only targeted hate groups, racist skinheads, and Alt-Right partisans, but police, journalists, campus venues, and Trump supporters as well, a small number of whom, sometimes also instigated violence,” Levin said in his report.

“They increasingly saw demonstrations less as an opportunity for expression, and more as the culmination of a pre-choreographed violent street or campus battle, that began as vitriolic disputes on social media,” he added.

Those demonstrations threaten free speech, inclusion and the right of all views to be expressed, said Casey Mattox, senior counsel and the director of the Center for Academic Freedom with Alliance Defending Freedom. The group filed a federal lawsuit against Cal State University, Los Angeles, and several campus professors last year for allegedly allowing a mob to block access to a speech to be given by conservative author and political commentator Ben Shapiro.

The lawsuit was eventually dismissed after the university agreed to changing some of its policies.

When universities allow mobs to shut down such events “it sends a message that some people and some views are completely ostracized from society and that does not lead to good things,” Mattox said.

“It also means that the ideas in power are not criticized and checked,” he added. “Even if you’re right, there’s always something you can learn from another person.”

Not all hate crimes

Robin Toma, executive director of the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission, said that while assaults, vandalism and other incidents based on political disagreements aren’t considered hate crimes, that doesn’t mean the commission isn’t concerned about it.

“We want to make sure we promote civility and people listen to each other,” he said.

Meanwhile, the 14 percent increase in overall hate crimes across the Golden State included a threat against a mosque in Fresno — in which someone stated “President Trump is going to cleanse America and do to Muslims what Hitler did to the Jews” — and a spike in vandalism in Orange County.

Among the California cities examined, Los Angeles and San Jose showed what Levin called notable growth of hate crimes during the election time period compared to previous months or during the same time period in 2015.

Los Angeles had a 29 percent increase in the fourth quarter of 2016 when compared with the previous year, while San Jose saw its numbers of hate crimes triple from 3 to 9 during that same period, according to the report.

In California, a hate crime is “a criminal act of intimidation, harassment, physical force or threat toward a person or property because of someone’s actual or perceived race, ethnicity, national origin, ancestry, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age or disability.”

“We saw a definite spike,” Levin said of Los Angeles, which tends to drive the data for the rest of the state.

The report also found:

• Hate crimes based on race, ethnicity and sexual orientation rose 15 percent in Los Angeles but religion-based hate crimes decreased.

• Los Angeles had 230 hate crimes, the third highest number any city in the nation in 2016 behind New York, which had 380 and Boston, which reported 275.

• California has the largest number of hate groups and those groups are increasing.

The report concluded that overall hate crimes in nine of California’s largest cities rose to a total of 354 in 2016, up from 2015’s total of 310.

The data were provided by local law enforcement agencies and will likely increase as more information for 2016 is released. Levin said police data can fall short of reporting hate crimes and incidents against Sikhs, Arabs, and transgender people.

Still, if the rise in hate crimes for 2016 holds, then it will be the first year in two decades where California experienced back-to-back consecutive annual increases, since 2015 also showed a spike from the year before, he noted.

But even with the rise in hate crimes, the totals will still likely be lower than the 2001 record of 2,246.