Orange County Supervisors took away much of the power behind its commission responsible for reporting hate crimes on Tuesday morning, blocking its members from speaking publicly on the same day they recognized Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Korean-American Day.  

Supervisors didn’t spend much time talking about the new rules for the commission, but their staff report notes that one of the amendments will change the ability of the commissioners to speak publicly.

“The Commission is not authorized to make statements, press releases or reports on behalf of the Commission,” wrote county staff in the report.  

The shift comes after the county fired the outside contractor who used to prepare the hate crime reports last year and removed all accounting of hate incidents from the 2023 hate crime report, which was quietly released earlier this month. 

To review the new report, click here. 

Supervisors ultimately voted 3-2 to cut the number of people on the commission from 11 to seven, removing all members who aren’t appointed directly by them aside from a representative for the county’s police departments and a representative from the county sheriff’s department.

Supervisors Doug Chaffee and Vicente Sarmiento both said the commission needs to be able to speak up to do its job, opposing the cuts. 

“I think the Human Relations Commission has a chance to be a beacon of tolerance for the entire community. It’s not just data gathering,” Chaffee said. “I think it needs to have some proactive approach letting the county know who they are, what they do, what they stand for, and that they do work with law enforcement, among other things.”

Sarmiento also brought up concerns over the decision to cut the number of commission meetings and what he saw as “less autonomy and independence by the commission to be able to speak freely on issues.” 

“This certainly seems like this commission has morphed into something that wasn’t its true legislative intent,” Sarmiento said. “The fact that we have one person dedicated to staff this commission shows the value and the importance that this county is placing on an issue that is serious.” 

Supervisors also reduced the number of annual meetings to four per year. 

Supervisor Don Wagner argued a smaller commission would make it easier for its members to engage with issues. 

“I don’t want to repeat the mistakes of the past, at least as we relaunch this commission,” Wagner said. “Give it a try, see how it works. See if we’ve got the voices we need.” 

Supervisor Katrina Foley also said there was a need to contract the commission because they were behind on preparing the 2024 hate crime report.

“That needs to be a priority of the commission and getting that, I think, underway is really important,” Foley said. 

Sarmiento raised concerns about law enforcement representatives making up about a third of the commission. 

“We need to have the community and make sure that they have the comfort level to be able to speak openly about things that are very, very tough for them to mention,” he said. 

How Should the County Track Hate Incidents?

Much of this week’s discussion also focused on whether or not the future reports would go back to including hate incidents in the future. 

While hate crimes dropped to below 100 in 2023 according to the report, which includes incidents like murder or vandalism, the latest report removed any mention of hate incidents, which previous reports had documented at a peak of over 300 per year.

While a majority of supervisors said they want to track hate incidents, which can include things like yelling a racial slur or distribution of antisemitic flyers in a public space, they expressed a need to develop a standard of what a hate incident is. 

“There was not a consistent methodology that was statistically accurate for collecting the data,” Foley said.  

District Attorney Todd Spitzer also spoke up at the meeting about the difficulty in identifying hate incidents and tracking them. 

“The Department of Justice does not have a mechanism to track hate incidents,” Spitzer said. “If we file it, then it’s deemed a hate crime. We’re the agency that makes that decision.”

“We need to figure out how to track hate incidents,” he continued. “But it’s clear there needs to be standards on how to do that.”

Jessica Witt, the county’s director of Government and Community Relations and the sole county staffer assigned to the commission, said the new commission would offer a “reset,” to take a new look at how the county’s tracking of hate crimes and incidents would look moving forward. 

“I think there is the opportunity to work with the Commission and other community stakeholders to develop a methodology as to how we’re going to do that and how far reaching that information is,” Witt said. “I think that was also one of the challenges.” 

Alison Edwards, CEO of OC Groundswell, the county’s former contractor for the annual hate report, said they worked with community organizations to take in reports of hate incidents and reviewed them to try and avoid repeated incidents. 

“We always did our best with just a few staff to cull through data and make sure we didn’t have duplicates to the best of our ability,” Edwards said in a Tuesday afternoon interview. “It’s challenging.” 

She also highlighted that the commission is only effective with robust outreach and people knowing it exists. 

“The Human Relations Commission is very important to the county, but it’s only as important as it is known,” Edwards said. “Some of the important work…is that outreach and education.” 

Reporter Hosam Elattar contributed to this story.

Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org.