In today's world, most of us live in a city, town or community that contains a unique, culturally diverse population.   Residents represent a broad spectrum of nearly every culture, nationality, race and religion on this earth.  This diversity has significantly contributed to making the United States a vibrant and dynamic place to live.

Unfortunately, not everyone thinks this way.  There are peopl;e and groups who would attack our heritage by comitting crimes and acts that target members of a specific group.  These crimes are knoiwn as "hate crimes" and "hate incidents".

A hate crime is any criminal act or attempted criminal act directed against a person or persons based on the victim's actual or perceived race, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, disability or gender.

Some examples of hate crimes include:

• Acts which result in injury, even if then injury is slight.
  
• Threats of violence that look like they can be carried out.
  
• Acts which result in property damage.
  
• Any criminal act or attempted criminal act, including propery damage, directed against a public or provate agency.
  

Hate incidents are similar to hate crimes in that the act is directed against a person or persons based on the victim's actual or perceived race, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, disability or gender.  The basic difference between a hate incident d a hate crime is that a hate incident is a non-criminal act.

Examples of a hate incident might include:

• Circulating offensive material such as hate flyers stuffed in mailboxes or thrown ona person's lawn.
  
• Posting hate materials that does not result in propery damage such as demeaning caricatures depicting a racial, ethnic or religious group.
  
• Displaying hate graffiti in public places which is not directed against a specific target such as an epithet on a vacant building or on a freeway overpass.