Crimes of Hate on the Rise in Valley : Bigotry: LAPD cites 38% increase over first half of '94. Incidents were largely nonviolent, not tied to organized group.

By NICHOLAS RICCARDI

Aug. 20, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

After a brief lull attributed to the lingering upheaval of the Northridge earthquake, the number of so-called hate incidents reported to the Los Angeles Police Department is up citywide this year, with the largest increase by far in the San Fernando Valley.

In the first six months of the year, the LAPD’s Valley Bureau documented 88 instances of racially motivated crimes or other activity, compared to 64 in the first six months following the Jan. 17, 1994, earthquake.

Overall, Los Angeles residents reported 240 hate incidents to the LAPD in the first six months of 1995, 40 more than in the same period of 1994.

The Valley is “the front-runner, as far as hate crimes,” says LAPD Detective Lawrence Garrett, who tracks statistics for the department.

Garrett said the Valley usually leads the city in reported hate incidents for a number of reasons, one of which is that it is the most populous of the LAPD’s four geographic bureaus. But he noted a 38% increase in reported incidents this year, while none of the LAPD’s three other bureaus has experienced more than an 18% hike.

Officials and activists who monitor hate crimes are quick to point out that the reported incidents were largely nonviolent and did not appear to be the work of an organized group.

“It’s not like what I saw growing up in Alabama,” said Robert Winn, first vice president of the Valley chapter of the NAACP. Nor, he said, are the problems as bad as in areas of northern Los Angeles County where skinheads were arrested for allegedly firing shots at blacks.

“But it can escalate into that if we fail to address the crimes in their infantile stage,” added Winn, who was an activist in the segregated South during the 1950s and 1960s.

The LAPD defines a hate crime as a criminal act motivated by hatred of race, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, gender, age or physical disability. The department tracks those crimes--and expressions of hatred that do not involve illegal activity, such as racial epithets or pamphlets--and issues quarterly reports on the number of hate incidents in Los Angeles.

Citywide, hate incidents rose 20% in the first six months of this year after plunging 54% during the same period last year.

Garrett and other experts said that the main difference between 1994 and prior years was the 6.7-magnitude Northridge earthquake, whose disruption to thousands of lives is believed to have quelled crime for months afterward.

“The majority of the people out here [were] focused on a natural disaster,” Garrett said. “When the natural disaster is over and everything is normal, hate crimes are back to their same old thing.”

In fact, racially motivated hate crimes still have not returned to their pre-quake levels: Only 196 such incidents were reported to the LAPD January through June of this year, contrasted with 256 during the same period in 1993. But such incidents have risen 48% citywide over last year, according to LAPD reports. And the largest surge has been in crimes against whites--nearly doubling over the same period last year from 44 to 80.

“There’s a rise in community-level tension and conflict, there’s no question about that,” said Christopher McCauley, executive director of the Los Angeles City Human Relations Commission.

“There’s a general frustration in many, many parts of the city because of the lack of principally economic opportunity that causes people to be very competitive for jobs, to be angry.”

The Valley has been a traditional hot spot for hate because it may be the most diverse section of the city, Garrett said. “You just have more of a mixture in the Valley than anywhere else,” he said. “In the Valley, you have more whites who might victimize blacks or Hispanics.”

He also noted a large Jewish population, particularly in the West Valley, where the sharpest increase in hate incidents has been reported in the Valley this year.

In the first six months of 1995, 24 incidents were reported, contrasted with 29 for all 12 months of 1994, LAPD records show. The West Valley rise was dramatic enough to help prompt the city’s Human Relations Commission to schedule a fall meeting there.

Detective Mike Stangland, hate crimes coordinator for the West Valley Division, said the increase is partly due to an elusive crew of white supremacist taggers who have been marking up West Hills neighborhoods with swastikas and white power signs.

A dozen acts of hateful vandalism have been reported so far this year in the West Valley, in contrast to 10 for all last year. The taggers don’t seem to target property owned by minorities with their vandalism, Stangland said, but minorities tend to report most of the tagging because they are most sensitive to it.

One popular site for the taggers is the 22600 block of Hamlin Street, near Hamlin Street School. Residents said the black swastikas, which are quickly painted over, are a blight to their neighborhood.

“Nobody likes it,” said a 72-year-old resident, “but I don’t think it scares anybody.” Nonetheless, he would not give his name.

Stangland said the vandals don’t seem dangerous. “If they were bona fide, they’d be going after somebody, not just randomly tagging,” he said.

Another factor in the rise of reported hate incidents throughout the Valley is several racist flyers that have been showing up in mailboxes, police say. One, emblazoned with a caricature of a Latino being dropped across the U.S.-Mexican border, reads: “It’s time we revoked the citizenship of these fiends and deport them to their land of racial origin. When America was white , America worked.”

Others viciously attack Jews and mixed-race couples, but authorities believe they are the work of a harmless, if offensive, crank.

But not all of the increased Valley hate incidents can be attributed to taggers and crackpot pamphleteers. The number of hate-motivated assaults with a deadly weapon rose from 10 in the first six months of last year to 19 for the same period this year.

Winn, of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, attributes the rise to the nation’s political swing to the right, citing the statewide initiative to abolish affirmative action as the fuel for several recent acts of racial hatred.

“The N-word is being used more now than ever before,” he said.

Regardless of the underlying causes, said Roni Blau, director of the Valley office of the Anti-Defamation League, the increase in Valley activity should not worry residents.

“It’s not alarming unless there is a consistent pattern, unless it rises to the level of persistent violence,” she said. “Of course it’s unpleasant, and it has to be reported.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Rise in Hate Crime

The number of hate crimes reported to the LAPD in the first six months of 1995 has risen sharply compared to the same period last year. Officials say the drop of hate incidents in 1994 can partly be attributed to the Northridge earthquake.

By Police Bureau

Number of reported hate crimes and hate incidents by LAPD bureaus for the first six months of the past three years.

*--*

West Central South Valley 1993 69 66 54 119 1994 48 44 44 64 1995 51 52 49 88

*--*

By Type of Incident

Breakdown of some of the reported incidents in the Valley bureau in the first six months of the past three years. A hate incident is when hate is the motivating force in a legal behavior, such as drawing up fliers or yelling at someone.

1995:

Annoying phone calls: 2

Assault with a deadly weapon:19

Battery: 8

Hate incident: 23

Robbery: 4

Terrorist threat: 1

Threatening phone call: 10

Vandalism: 20

1994:

Annoying phone calls: 4

Assault with a deadly weapon: 10