Here’s what I learned from reporting on LA County’s anti-LGBTQ hate crimes

Before I began examining the public health impact of hate crimes against LGBTQ people for the Center for Health Journalism’s Data Fellowship, I had personal experience with the topic. 

Living as a transgender man in Los Angeles County since 2017, I’ve both experienced and heard of numerous incidents of hate violence against people in my community. 

There was the time my nonbinary partner was accosted by a man at a gas station, who approached screaming anti-gay slurs at them until they drove off, terrified. Or the time a gay friend was attacked by an unhoused man, who hit him over the head with a chair outside a popular cafe just up the street from my home. Several weeks later, the same friend was accosted by an individual who followed him into a local business, attacking him and forcing my friend to use violence to escape the situation. And just last month, an openly gay neighbor of mine was attacked and robbed of his jewelry in broad daylight in front of our Highland Park apartment building. Though he couldn’t prove conclusively that it was a hate crime, he told me as he gestured to the bruises on his neck and bloody feet that he felt targeted for his sexuality. Unfortunately, he was probably right. 

These incidents are more common than many people who aren’t members of the LGBTQ community realize. The main motivation I had for pitching this project to the Center for Health Journalism was to inform the larger public about the rising tide of threats that their LGBTQ neighbors are facing. 

I published a series examining the impact this violence has on public health with The Advocate Magazine, one of the nation’s oldest sources of news for the queer and trans community. The outlet was established in 1967 in response to a brutal raid by the Los Angeles Police Department on The Black Cat, a still-standing gay bar in Silver Lake, with the aim of not just raising awareness of the crimes, but how they’re policed and what might be done to stop them. 

The three-part series first examined the overall trend of rising hate crimes against transgender people in LA County, providing several decades of context and illustrating the rise in violence. Second, we attempted to explain the reason for this uptick in hate crimes, which experts ultimately couldn’t pin down to a single cause but attributed in part to the rising visibility of transgender and queer people more broadly. And, in our final story, we looked at how hate crimes are policed in LA County, with valuable insights from a longtime LAPD detective who was responsible for training officers responding to hate crimes. 

In the course of this nearly 10-month project, numerous lessons revealed themselves to me. Here are a few, in hopes they’ll help other reporters with similar undertakings: 

Roll with the punches, and shift your focus as needed. 

Originally pitched as a three-part series on how hate crimes are reported, policed, and measured, this series morphed as I coped with a lack of data. 

The timeframe I sought to analyze spanned 1993 to 2023, as I aimed to paint a picture of how hate crimes have changed over time. But within several months of filing my Freedom of Information Act request, the LA County Sheriff’s Department initially filed for an extension, citing a high volume of requests. They then informed me they only had data going back to 2009. I reviewed the data nonetheless, but then found out that it was vague, and only accounted for either “sexual orientation” or “gender,” without specifics as to what those umbrella terms meant. 

After talking to the LA Police Department’s LGBTQ community liaison officer, I learned that the department reported data to the LA County Commission on Human Relations (LACCHR), as did many of the other jurisdictions I’d been separately trying to receive records from. Ultimately, my senior fellow and I decided that it was best to rely on the cleaner, more complete data from LACCHR, in part because the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department was one of several law enforcement agencies that reported to the county already. 

This leads me to perhaps the biggest takeaway from this project: Whenever possible, shift your focus to accommodate the data you’re able to get, instead of toiling away searching for data you can’t obtain. And work with government sources to find it, as they have more resources and muscle to collect it than you do. 

While meeting with the LACCHR, I learned that they’d been collecting data on hate crimes across all demographics in LA County — encompassing some 9.6 million people — dating back 25 years, more than my original timeline. The custodians of the data were thrilled to hand it over and for their work to see the light of day, and surprisingly told me I was the first reporter to ask for it. 

While I had analysis and cleaning to do, the data was reliable. By going straight to the analysts, I was able to clarify all my questions about how it was categorized or displayed, which was invaluable when it came to fact-checking. 

Ask the nitpicky data questions. 

I learned quickly that when working with a massive data set spanning decades, there is no question too granular to ask. 

I was fortunate the custodians of my data were readily available to answer my questions. I’d encourage anyone doing similar work to establish a relationship with their sources of data. 

I was able to clarify various points in the vast data set, like what it meant when an offense was marked “other” versus “unknown,” or how to tell if a report was indicating the victim wasn’t a person, and instead an organization. 

Other questions about how the data was collected and clarifications on terminology proved to be easy to answer once I’d got the data custodians on the phone. This was key in making sure I was identifying the right trends and that the story was as accurate as possible.

Community must be central.  

Stories are only as compelling as their human subjects, and it’s easy to get bogged down in the data points. But, especially in my case, the data I was examining represented lived, human experiences, and often experiences of great pain or trauma. It was vital to have those voices on record. 

I knew early on this story would only resonate for people if it had key characters, real people who experienced violence as a result of their identity. I was also aware that those people ideally should be transgender women of color, who are disproportionately targeted for their identity. I also had to be sure that I handled these interviews delicately, as the objective was not to retraumatize them but afford them space to process their experiences and enlighten others. 

By finding advocacy groups like the TransLatina Coalition, I was able to find sources who would open up to me about their experiences with street violence, but also share their informed opinions on what should be done to fix it. And in speaking to numerous transgender women, I learned that hate attacks can affect anyone, even those in supposed positions of power. One source who worked for the city of LA was the victim of multiple hateful assaults and even she had a difficult time making her case to the police. 

My experience living with and treating my PTSD gave me unique insight into how to talk to members of my community who had experienced hate violence. But you don’t need to have a dark past to understand how to thoughtfully make space for people to share their experiences, however painful. Be sure to always make sure the source is aware of precisely what will be discussed beforehand, and always give them an opportunity to stop the discussion without judgment. 

Community sources can also be local elected officials, and I spoke to several in the course of reporting these stories. It turned out my local county supervisor had been active in promoting a new program designed to help Angelenos of all stripes report hate violence if they witness or experience it, and she was glad to go on record to share her take on the issue, which provided valuable perspective about actionable things that can be done locally to stop the spread of hate violence. 

Don’t report at the expense of your sanity. 

The Center’s fellowship programs attract a diverse group of ambitious reporters, a crop of people who often overextend ourselves to produce our best work, sometimes without realizing it. 

During my project, I spoke with fellow journalists at varying levels of experience about how they maintain mental equilibrium while working on difficult stories. The most common response was to take time away from work. While a break can seem impossible knowing there’s a spreadsheet thousands of lines long waiting to be analyzed in your drive, it is important to step back now and again.  

I found it particularly useful to distance myself from the project at times, and I’d encourage anyone pursuing particularly difficult topics to do the same when the going gets tough. Do something to help yourself recharge, and approach the reporting again when you feel equipped to do your best work. Your sources, your editors, and your brain will thank you.