Hate crimes in Orange County spike after election of President Donald Trump, report finds

Hate crimes and incidents in Orange County have spiked following the election of President Donald Trump, according to a report released Friday.

The report, created by the Orange County Human Relations Commission, shows there were 50 reported hate crimes in 2016, up from a reported 44 in 2015.

The findings come as the commission and nonprofit face a funding cut from the Orange County Board of Supervisors.

There were also 72 reported hate incidents in the county, compared to 43 in 2015. Hate incidents are defined as racially charged incidents that do not rise to the level of an actual crime.

According to the report, blacks were the most frequent targets of hate crimes in Orange County, despite only making up 2.1 percent of the overall population. The commission reports that 14 percent of the county's reported hate crimes involved black residents.

Hate crimes against Latinos also increased from two in 2015 to four in 2016. There was also a slight increase against Asians from three to four.

The report also showed that anti-Semitic crimes dropped from seven in 2015 to four in 2016, as well as crimes against Christians in which there were only three reported crimes.

But Muslims accounted for 35 percent of the incidents and Latinos were victims 18 percent of the time, the report said.

Most of the crimes overall occurred in public 33 percent of the time and 24 percent of the time at schools.

City News Service contributed to this report.