LA City Council Considers Offering Monetary Rewards For Information Leading To Hate Crime Arrests, Convictions
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — Monetary rewards are used to help capture murderers and hit-and-run drivers, and the Los Angeles City Council is now considering offering such rewards to help arrest and convict people who commit hate crimes.
A motion introduced by Councilman John Lee will come under consideration by the full council Friday. The motion instructs the Office of the Chief Legislative Analyst and City Attorney's office to explore the possibility of using its existing reward program, or create a new one, to solicit information that leads to the identification, arrest, and conviction of people who commit hate crimes.
"Rewards encourage otherwise reticent individuals to provide key information on serious crimes to investigators, and also serve as a valuable tool to draw attention from the media and others to these crimes to generate investigative leads," the text of the motion reads. "When the council can clearly issue rewards for information related to more serious hate crimes, such as assault or murder, it is not clear that the existing reward program can be used for other, less violent hate crimes."
Just a day earlier, the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations reported that hate crimes jumped 20% in 2020. Most of those hate crimes were racially motivated, and they were found to be getting increasingly violent.
The motion that will come under consideration Friday cites a record 62 hate crimes, most of which were anti-Asian, were reported in Los Angeles in April, according to the LAPD.