Since 2017, California lawmakers have introduced more than a dozen bills aimed at hate crimes, including attempts to improve data, train police and establish a hotline.
Most of those bills died in committees, never getting a floor vote, according to a CalMatters analysis.
But in the wake of recent, highly visible crimes targeting Asian Americans, lawmakers are introducing some of the same measures their colleagues once rejected.
"There wasn't the same level of urgency that I think is true today," said Democratic Assemblymember David Chiu of San Francisco, who is reintroducing his bill from 2017 that would require the state attorney general to maintain a toll-free number where people could report hate crimes.
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"The Atlanta shooting woke up much of the rest of America to what those of us in the Asian American community have been experiencing for quite some time."
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