Hate Crime Mars Family’s Home, Security

Fifteen-year-old Tamia Moore used to feel safe in her Pacoima neighborhood. It had rough parts, she conceded, but it wasn’t as bad as other places, and people tended to keep to themselves.

But the sense of security Tamia and her family had was shattered Wednesday when their home on Pinney Street was burglarized and defaced with racial slurs referring to blacks and Latinos.

“The fact that someone marked the epithet on the walls classifies it as a hate crime,” said Los Angeles Police Detective Larry Queen.

The incident occurred between 7:30 a.m. and noon Wednesday.

In addition to stealing a VCR and jewelry, vandals ransacked a room in the house, slashed a water bed and scrawled racial slurs on the walls of the living room, Queen said.

The morning after the burglary, the words “KKK” and “War,” written with a blue marker, still covered one wall.

Racial slurs referring to blacks and Latinos were written on another wall with a circle drawn around them and a slash going through it.

The incident has left the entire family afraid and baffled.

Tamia’s mother, Jill Williamson, has lived on Pinney Street for 17 years without incident.

She shares the home with her four daughters and five grandchildren.

“The first question that came to my mind is why? What did I do?” she said. “It just hurts.”

Williamson described her neighborhood as relatively peaceful.

“We haven’t had any problems with the neighbors. I haven’t had a confrontation with anyone.”

Queen, who handles hate crimes for the Foothill Division, said Wednesday’s incident was the 16th in his division this year, but there have been no other crimes of this sort in Williamson’s neighborhood.

Between January and March of this year there were 31 reported hate crimes in the Valley and 71 in the city, police said.

In spite of the writing, Williamson doubted that the crime was the work of the Ku Klux Klan or any other white supremacist group.

“Maybe it was some kids,” she said. “I still don’t understand. Why go to that length to write that?”