Los Angeles County DA, LAPD chief detail crackdown on hate crime; suspect in 2023 Metro bus stabbing receives life sentence

LOS ANGELES (CNS) — Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman on Thursday detailed a number of hate crime cases being handled by his office, emphasizing that the acts alleged and in at least one case proven will not be tolerated in one of the most diverse cities in the world.

Joining Hochman at the noon hour news conference at Hall of Justice were Los Angeles Police Department Chief Jim McDonnell, Redondo Beach Police Chief Steve Sprengel, Culver City Police Assistant Chief Troy Dunlap and the chairs of the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office community advisory boards.

The district attorney painted a portrait of Los Angeles County as a house built on “trust and respect.”

“What hate criminals want to do is … destroy the house,” he said. “Whether they do it with their words, whether they do it with a spray can, whether they do it with a knife or a gun. The hate criminals are designed to go ahead and destroy the house that we all … live in and prosper in. That is not going to happen.”

Among 10 people who were charged recently in alleged hate crime cases filed by the District Attorney’s Office is Gerald Pitts, 57, of Santa Monica who was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole plus seven years for a March 2023 hate crime attack aboard a Metro bus.

Pitts shouted racial slurs as the victim tried to walk past him to sit down, then stabbed Santos Tejas Gonzalez as he tried to leave the bus at the next stop and kicked him repeatedly in the head and continued to yell epithets as the victim fell from the bus, according to the District Attorney’s Office.

Gonzalez suffered life-threatening injuries, but survived the attack, according to the District Attorney’s Office.

A defendant in another case involving an attack with a metal bar that left a victim in wheelchair, possibly for life, sought a mental health diversion that would allow him to eventually be free after treatment, but the District Attorney’s Office successfully appealed and got the case returned to court, Hochman said.

The district attorney said the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects most speech however odious, but when hate incidents are combined with criminal acts, that crosses the line into hate crime and he vowed to prosecute such acts in all instances.

“These are not isolated cases of violence,” McDonnell said during his turn at the lectern. “These are deliberate attacks fueled by bias and hate. They are an assault on the values that we hold together in this city.”

He said every hate crime allegation is pursued by LAPD detectives who work closely with the DA’s office.

“When someone commits a hate crime, they are not just violating an individual, they’re attacking an entire community,” McDonnell said. “That will not be tolerated in Los Angeles.”

McDonnell said hate crime incidence, however, is trending downward from the 838 attacks, a record high, that were logged in 2023.

He said there was a 4% decrease in such incidents as of the end of July compared to the same period in 2024-25.