Nearly a quarter of all hate crimes reported in Los Angeles County last year were based on sexual orientation, making gay men, lesbians and LGBT organizations the group most frequently targeted for the first time in many years, according to a new report.

The last time the number of homophobic hate crimes exceeded the number of anti-black crimes was in 2002, according to the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations.

There were 118 reported hate crimes based on sexual orientation in 2016, which is two less than the prior year, according to the Commission’s 2016 Hate Crime Report released Thursday. Eighty-one percent of these hate crimes were violent.

They included one hate murder, in which prosecutors alleged that Shehadeh Khalil Issa of North Hills killed his openly gay adult son, Amir, in April of last year partly because of “an extreme hatred of his son’s sexuality.” Issa was found guilty of premeditated murder in the death of his his wife and son as well as for the hate crime allegation.

The total number of hate crimes reported in the county last year was 482, one less than 2015, when there was a 24 percent increase over 2014 and the highest total since 2011, according to the report.

Meanwhile, gender-based crimes jumped by 77 percent last year, most of which were anti-transgender crimes. In fact, anti-transgender crimes jumped 72 percent from 18 to 31 reported incidents with a staggering 97 percent of a violent nature — more than any major victim group, the Commission found.

“It’s alarming (and) at the same time, I always know that the numbers that law enforcement report compared to the number of clients I see coming through my office is always different because there is this fear of going to law enforcement and reporting because there is a fear of re-victimization,” said Mariana Marroquin, a transgender woman who is program manager for the Anti-Violence Project at the Los Angeles LGBT Center.

Latina transgender women, like Marroquin, were targeted the most, the report found. Marroquin said she fled her native Guatemala after she was attacked for her gender identity, stripped naked and heard her attackers plot her death in 1998. Then one day after she had moved to the U.S. in 2002, she was called a homophobic slur by a random man and punched in the face while walking home in the Hollywood area.

However, the work being done with the transgender community about knowing their rights is paying off, she said, because people are more willing to come forward and report such incidents than they have been in the past.

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Another alarming trend is that hate crimes in which there was evidence of white supremacist ideology — including acts of vandalism in which swastikas or other hate symbols were used — surged by 67 percent from 63 in 2015 to 105 incidents in 2016. This made up more than one-fifth of all hate crimes reported last year, up from 13 percent the previous year.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis, who represents the San Gabriel Valley and east and northeast L.A., said has witnessed this in the southeastern part of her district. In recent months, they’ve had to alert the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department because white supremacists and anti-immigrant groups have disrupted city council meetings in communities like Cudahy — yelling hateful rhetoric and brandishing weapons at times.

“Most hate crimes appear to be motivated by race, ethnicity or national origin,” she said.

The Commission also found that between the Nov. 8, 2016 presidential election and Dec. 31, 82 hate crimes were reported in the county — representing an increase of seven hate crimes or 9 percent from the same period the previous year.

“While seven additional crimes may not seem like a lot, we have to remember that in the previous year there was an exceptionally large jump (47 percent) in the number of hate crimes in November and December of 2015 following the terrorist attacks in Paris and then in neighboring San Bernardino,” said Robin S. Toma, executive director of the L.A. County Commission on Human Relations, referring to a surge in anti-Muslim and Middle Eastern hate crimes.

President Donald Trump’s name was touted in several reported hate crimes during this period. Among them, an Asian woman in Woodland Hills was yelled at by two white men in a car while walking her dogs on Nov. 11 of last year. Using racial slurs, the perpetrators told her to go back to where she came from, yelled “Trump town!” and struck her with eggs, according to the report.

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Blacks were the second most targeted group with 112 incidents reported though anti-black hate crimes declined 19 percent over 2015. Jews were the third most targeted group, comprising 67 percent of the 101 religious hate crimes despite making up a small percentage of the population. Mexicans were the fourth most targeted group while transgender individuals were the fifth.

Meanwhile, whites were the only racial/ethnic group to experience a sharp increase in hate crimes. Anti-white crimes jumped from 11 incidents to 27 incidents — or 145 percent — but still occurred at a lower rate than other ethnic groups, the report found.

The largest number of hate crimes reported last year — 95 — took place in the sprawling San Fernando Valley, followed by the metro region, which stretches from West Hollywood to Boyle Heights. But when taking into account each area’s population, the metro region had the highest rate of hate crimes followed by the west region V, which includes Beverly Hills, Culver City and a number of affluent beach cities.