SF DA Working To Charge Skinhead With Hate Crime
San Francisco Police Department’s statistics show most 2010 hate crime investigations were on crimes that were proven to be motivated by sexual biases, i.e. anti-gay, anti-woman.
But city prosecutors said Wednesday that recent reports showed a rise in racially-related hate crimes in the San Francisco, and they involved white supremacist skinheads.
Last July, a plaza in San Francisco’s multicultural Western Addition was the site of a violent, racially motivated attack that nearly killed a 56-year-old homeless man.
“It’s a case that involves a suspect who slashed an African-American man with a knife. We believed that the knife that was used was a Nazi blade,” said SF Assistant District Attorney Victor Hwang.
Hwang calls it a hate crime and says the suspect – 40-year-old Matthew Swan of San Francisco — has ties to white supremacist groups.