In light of recent events affecting the LGBTQ community in the US, the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Station in partnership with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), hosted a briefing of the Pulse Nightclub shooting, one of the deadliest mass shooting incidents in the nation’s history to address LGBTQ safety.
The presentation on Thursday, December 8th, was conducted by a terrorism expert from the FBI, that covered information leading to the attack, the aftermath, and lessons learned.
In the spirit of collaboration and teamwork, the attendees included officers from surrounding police agencies, block by block safety ambassadors, code enforcement and parking enforcement personnel.
“Thanks to our partners in WHD Community Safety and the FBI, who assisted us in making this possible,” reads a post in the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Station’s official Instagram account. “We look forward to hosting more critical incident reviews so we can continue to learn, collaborate, and work as one team to keep our communities safe.”
LGBTQ Safety – West Hollywood Sheriff’s Station Instagram screen grabThe 2021 Hate Crime Report from the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations reports that hate crimes spiked by 23% in Los Angeles County in 2021. The 2021 Hate Crime Report reveals that hate incidents and nonviolent hate crimes rose across the board, but also that the rate of violent incidents rose from 68% to 74%, marking the highest it’s been in the past 18 years. These findings reflect a shift into an increasingly violent society.
LGBTQ+ people were too often the victims of these hate crimes. Crimes based on sexual orientation went up by 15%, with 85% of them targeting gay men; 89% of these incidents were violent. Meanwhile, of the 41 reported anti-transgender crimes, 93% were of a violent nature—a rate of violence higher than any other marginalized group recorded by the report. These numbers only reflect a fraction of actual hate-motivated incidents; it’s estimated that nearly half of all hate crimes go unreported.
