FBI: Hate crimes in U.S., CA surge in first year of...

U.S. hate crimes increased by 17 percent last year, federal officials said Tuesday, a surge driven by racial and anti-Semitic attacks and linked by some experts to the wider public emergence of white supremacists and other hate groups.

Across the country, authorities reported 7,175 hate crimes in 2017, compared with 6,121 in 2016 — the number rising for the third consecutive year. In California, law enforcement agencies said 1,095 crimes last year were motivated by a victim’s race, ethnicity, ancestry, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or disability.

A total of 603 of these incidents were based on race, ethnicity or ancestry, compared with 522 in 2016. Religious hate crimes jumped 21 percent statewide and crimes against individuals based on sexual orientation rose 19 percent, according to the data released by the FBI .

San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón slammed President Trump after the release of Tuesday’s report, directly blaming his actions and words for the worsening climate documented in the federal report. Trump has repeatedly denied such accusations.

“America’s elected president has mocked the disabled, called Mexicans rapists and murderers, executed a Muslim travel ban, issued disparaging remarks about women and African Americans, and is working to roll back protections for members of our transgender community,” Gascón said. “The country’s increase in hate crimes should be a surprise to no one, but it should be alarming to all. We look to our elected leaders to set an example.”

Acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker said in a statement that the FBI report was a “call to action — and we will heed that call.” He said he was “particularly troubled” by the 37 percent increase nationwide in hate crimes targeting Jews.

San Francisco was the site of 19 crimes motivated by race or ethnicity last year — a 82 percent increase compared with 2016. Total hate crimes rose from 36 to 43, the FBI reported. A dozen crimes in the city targeted victims because of their sexual orientation, including a May 2017 attack at Powell Street BART Station, where a suspect allegedly beat a man and called him anti-gay slurs.

In March of last year, San Francisco police investigated a possible anti-Semitic hate crime after a vandal set fire to a Jewish symbol hanging from a UC Hastings student’s door.

In Oakland, reported hate crimes doubled from nine to 18 in 2017, with all but two of those incidents focused on race, ethnicity or religion.

In May of last year, two men pleaded no contest to savagely attacking a Sikh man in Richmond, leaving him with one less finger and suffering from severe emotional and physical trauma.

San Jose, the Bay Area’s largest city, saw the biggest increase in incidents based on race, ethnicity and ancestry, which rose by 160 percent from 10 to 26.

Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University San Bernardino, said the rise in hate crimes can’t be attributed to one person, but he did note the trend since President Trump was elected in November 2016.

“What I think we saw was this precipitous spike around election time. It then moderated,” Levin said. “But when it plateaued back down, it was at a higher level.”

Seth Brysk, a San Francisco-based regional director for the Anti-Defamation League, said that what’s missing from the FBI numbers are the hate crimes that are not being reported.

“There may be 10 times as many hate crimes occurring as are being reported,” he said. “It’s across the country.”

At least 91 cities with populations over 100,000 people, including Vallejo and Clovis (Fresno County), did not report any hate crimes to the FBI in 2017, which Brysk said is “not possible.”

The rise in California hate crimes can be attributed in part to social media sites that normalize racist rhetoric, such as the anonymous forum 4chan, and an increase in violent public demonstrations like those seen in Berkeley last year, Levin said.

In February 2017, a series of violent clashes broke out in Berkeley between far-right groups and their opponents, sometimes referred to as anti-fascists or antifa.

Berkeley reported a 77 percent increase in hate crimes last year, with 23 reports compared with 13 in 2016.

The failure of leaders like Trump to quickly condemn white supremacists, violence and hatred has emboldened some extremists, Brysk said. He said California has seen the emergence of new hate groups.

The Rise Above Movement, which formed in 2017 in Southern California, rose to prominence after the group’s involvement in the 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Va., which led to counter-protests and a suspected neo-Nazi driving into a crowd and killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer.

The group’s members train in mixed martial arts in anticipation that confrontations at public rallies could turn violent, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. In October, a man who worked at a Berkeley hot dog chain was arrested with three others after being indicted for allegedly starting a riot in Charlottesville.

A report by the Southern Poverty Law Center found that Identity Evropa, a group that hung a sign mocking San Francisco’s pro-immigrant sanctuary policy over the Yerba Buena Tunnel in January, is “at the forefront of the racist ‘alt-right’s’ effort to recruit white, college-aged men and transform them into the fashionable new face of white nationalism.”

“There were people who were already there, who held extremist bigoted points of view (and) were emboldened to express themselves publicly,” Brysk said.

“Particularly for white supremacists,” he added, “there is a sense that now is their time.”

Sarah Ravani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: sravani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SarRavani