The arrests last weekend in Lake Los Angeles of three suspected white supremacists participating in a racially-motivated attack may be a reminder of the continuing reach of hate groups in Los Angeles County. Three White males allegedly harassed and attacked three Latino teenagers and proceeded to assault a family that tried to intervene. The attackers were apprehended on the east side of Stephen Sorensen Park and were arrested and charged with assault with a deadly weapon as well as a hate crime.
African Americans, Latinos and members of the LGBT community are frequent targets of racially motivated violence. Now a report from the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations has revealed that nearly a dozen anti-Muslim/Middle Easterner hate crimes were reported in the county in November and December, compared with one such crime during the comparable period in 2014, it was announced today.
The analysis was conducted by the commission in the wake of the terror attacks that occurred in Paris in November and San Bernardino in December.
Among the 11 incidents recorded:
— Dec. 1 at a restaurant in Los Angeles, a man asked the victim, “`Where are you from?” When the victim said he was from Saudi Arabia, the suspect yelled at him and punched and kicked him;
— Dec. 2, which was the day a married couple when on a shooting rampage in San Bernardino, an Islamic organization in North Hollywood received phone calls from a suspect who used profanity, ridiculed Islam, and “stated that he hoped that Israel would eliminate Palestine, Turkey and Syria”;
— Dec. 3, an Islamic school in Hawthorne received a threat that everyone on the premises would be shot;
— Dec. 14, a suspect defaced the exterior of a middle school in Lake Balboa with graffiti that included expletives and anti-Islamic rhetoric;
— Dec. 17 at a park in South Los Angeles, a homeless person who is Muslim and from Iraq was punched by a man who used profane language and told the victim, “Go back to your country”; and
— Dec. 19 in Chatsworth, a man found his motorcycle scratched and spray-painted with anti-Arab language.
On Dec. 15, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a motion to condemn the Dec. 2 attack that killed 14 people at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, to recognize that “no religion or race or ethnicity is responsible for these acts,” and that “fear-based stereotyping and scapegoating creates an atmosphere conducive to Islamophobia, xenophobia, discrimination, hate and bigotry.”
The motion directed county agencies to increase outreach and assistance to the targeted vulnerable communities.
Last month, the Los Angeles Countywide Criminal Justice Coordination Committee established a task force to promote stronger relations and cooperation among police agencies and affected communities, and to more effectively prepare for any future incident that could result in a spike in hate crimes.
On Monday, a group of community and faith leaders gathered for a candlelight vigil at Pearson Park in Anaheim which was the site of a violent confrontation on Feb. 27 between KKK members and counter protesters.
