Two months after a mass shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego, the community is still roiling.
The San Diego Anti-Hate Coalition says that over a two-month period since the fatal attack, the San Diego region saw the largest increase in hate crimes documented by the City Attorney’s office since 2022.
The hate-crime targets run the gamut from Muslims to members of the LGBTQ community.
“This two-month period is the largest increase in our hate crimes that we’ve gotten in our office since 2022, which is quite startling,” Daniel Korchnoy, chief of special investigations with the San Diego City Attorney’s office, told the coalition. The organization includes representatives of non-governmental organizations, community groups and law enforcement agencies.
“It could be just a reaction to everything going on right now.”
Korchnoy and other attendees spoke about the continuing ripple effects of the May 18 shooting at the Islamic Center of San Diego, where three congregants were killed by two teen gunmen.
The meeting, like previous coalition gatherings, included organizations with different perspectives, like the Anti-Defamation League and the Council of American-Islamic Relations.
“There is still fear within the Muslim community,” said Omar Abusham, who does outreach for CAIR. That fear, he said, is not only present at the Islamic Center of San Diego, but is also palpable at several of the 17 other mosques in the region.
“They have experienced some type of hate crime or hate incidents,” he said. “It depends on how you want to classify it. They have been receiving mail as well as phone calls, text messages, and emails as well.”
“Some of that activity is coordinated,” said Det. Doug Roysdon from the San Diego Sheriff’s Department.
“They do target mosques or community organizations that happen to be Muslim,” he said, “but there are a lot of sporadic, random (messages), whether it’s a TikTok video mentioning the Islamic Center of San Diego or some chatter on news issues on social media.”
An Dang, with the District Attorney’s office, working in the Special Operation Division, sent an email to coalition members saying that the mosque shooting is “still very much under active investigation. My office met with Imam Taha Hassane and his task force recently to convey this message.”
Dang is one of the chairs for the coalition, but is in trial and could not attend the meeting.
Speaking for both the District Attorney and City Attorney offices, Korchnoy updated the Coalition with the latest numbers of hate incidents and hate crimes. He said the DA’s office so far has filed four hate crime cases — one gender-based, one religion-based, and two regarding race or ethnicity.
He added that the City Attorney’s office has received 11 hate crime cases in the last two months and filed six cases, two of which are based on sexual orientation, two based on ethnicity, and two are religion-based cases.
Fabienne Perlov, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, told the coalition there were 82 reported antisemitic incidents since January, with some of them being probed further as to “whether they cross the line into antisemitism or not.”
Of the 82 incidents, three were assaults, she said, but the “majority of our cases are in the form of vandalism of Jewish institutions…. In particular, for schools, we had a large swastika combined with the n-word at one of the elementary schools in the Santee school district in July.
“There is more and more harassment of folks online with direct threats.”
The coalition meeting closed with Korchnoy reminding attendees of the group’s purpose: “Our message is to stand against hate, no matter what kind of hate it is, no matter who it is.”
He also announced that this year’s United Against Hate Week is Oct. 18 -24.
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