The highest level of hate crimes recorded in a decade in Los Angeles, LA Times reported.

In 2018 it grew by almost 13% compared with the previous year, while a total of 289 hate crimes in 2018 against 256 in 2017 were recorded in Los Angeles.

According to the recently published report of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, the LGBTQ community was the target of 73 reported hate crimes, followed by 61 for African Americans and 14 for Jewish people.

These numbers are relatively small compared with other crimes, the number of hate attacks in Los Angeles increased by 45% last year. The number of hate crimes caused by race and ethnicity increased by 29% from 116 to 150.

Center Executive Director Brian Levin said as Los Angeles’ population has shifted, many of the accused perpetrators of hate crimes are not white.

The report comes in a week after Turkish flags were hung on two private campuses of Armenian schools. The Los Angeles Police Department is looking for a masked suspect seen hanging a dozen flags on one school’s fence. Turkey has long denied the Armenian genocide during the era of the Ottoman Empire.

“Meanwhile, a Tarzana synagogue was vandalized with anti-Semitic graffiti Tuesday morning, the same day the Armenian schools were targeted. There was no indication the two incidents were related,” the source noted adding: "Hate crimes in the country’s largest cities increased for the fifth consecutive year in 2018, according to the report. Like L.A., San Francisco, Chicago, Houston, Dallas and Seattle all recorded their highest number of hate crimes in a decade. The continuing uptick came despite police in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York reporting an overall downward crime trend.”