2 Simi Youths Arrested in Racist Graffiti

Police arrested two 16-year-olds Tuesday in connection with racist graffiti spray-painted last month at Simi Valley High School. Each teen-ager was charged with two counts of misdemeanor vandalism, said Simi Police Lt. Robert Klamser.

The high school juniors were arrested in connection with two vandalism incidents reported by school employees on Oct. 3 and Oct. 19. In the two cases, swastikas and racial epithets were spray-painted on the school’s tennis courts, baseball field dugout and windows on two buildings, causing about $3,000 damage, said police and school Principal David Ellis.

Ellis said school officials would conduct their own investigation and take appropriate disciplinary action when the students return.

Klamser said the case bore no apparent connection to four other “hate crimes” reported in the city since May that involved either skinhead gang members, racially oriented vandalism or both. No arrests have been made in those cases, the most serious of which caused about $20,000 in damage to the home of a black school teacher.

Klamser said in a prepared statement that police had “indications that the suspects have sympathies to the white-supremacist movement” but no evidence that they belonged to any gangs.