Black Leader Calls Attack on His Home a Hate Crime : Oxnard: NAACP President John Hatcher says he is angry about the spray-painted words on his garage. He lives in a multiethnic neighborhood.

Vandals spray-painted the home of Ventura County NAACP President John Hatcher in an act that the black community leader characterized Thursday as a racist hate crime.

Sprayed in 2-foot-tall, black letters on the garage of his Oxnard home, the words “We Is Apes” were discovered by Hatcher about 7:30 a.m. as he left for work.

“I was angry,” said Hatcher, who added that he has also received death threats over the phone and in the mail in recent months. “It’s an attack on me personally, or my family, or my race.”

The multiethnic street where Hatcher lives includes families of blacks, Japanese, whites and Latinos, many of whom have lived for decades in the 22-year-old neighborhood.

Hatcher, 59, has headed the local chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People for 10 years and has been a loud and visible critic of law enforcement and educational institutions in the county.

Last year, he threatened to file a lawsuit against the Ventura County Community College District on behalf of black students at Oxnard College who he claimed were getting insufficient services. Hatcher has also threatened to sue police on charges of brutality.

The attack on Hatcher’s home is one of about a dozen hate crimes based on a person’s race, sex, religion or sexual orientation reported this year to Ventura County law enforcement officials.

Hatcher said he believes that it was committed by a white-supremacist organization whose members regularly send him abusive hate letters and hurl insults over the telephone. Recently, he said, the attacks against him and his organization have worsened.

Four months ago, his daughter answered the telephone only to have the caller threaten to “blow his head off,” Hatcher said. Last week, he received one of many telephone messages filled with racial insults and telling him he should get out of Ventura County.

Hatcher said he has not reported all the threats to police because he is afraid it will trigger more. But the attack on his home has made him nervous. “That’s just one incident. I expect to see more,” he said.

Oxnard Police Officer Ken Klopman declined to speculate on the identity of the vandals, but said Hatcher’s public role in the NAACP makes him a visible target. The officer took pictures of the garage door for use in a police investigation.

“Mr. Hatcher and the position he’s in, he’s in the spotlight,” Klopman said.

Hatcher spent an hour talking with Klopman and commiserating with sympathetic next-door neighbors in front of his home. Others living nearby who saw the graffiti stopped to give Hatcher their support.

Tony DeLuca, 62, one neighbor who lives across the street, said the vandals “make me sick.”

DeLuca, an Italian-American, went on to say, “I call it racial prejudice. . . . I’m shocked that this stuff is going on in America. Tomorrow it’s the Jew, and the next day it’s me.”

Mari Bourgoing, 68, Hatcher’s next-door neighbor for 13 years, said she was at first puzzled by the words scrawled on the garage door, then shocked as she realized what it meant.

“At first I didn’t think it was racial, but now I think it is,” said Bourgoing, who is Japanese. “Some ignoramus thinks he’s superior to others.”

A 34-year-old black California Youth Authority official stopped to tell Hatcher that he was also victimized four months ago. The man, who asked not to be identified, said vandals left toilet paper and smeared feces on his car. He said he stopped at Hatcher’s home because he saw racist overtones in the graffiti.

“I was born and raised here, and I know there’s still some racial tension around,” he said.

Members of the Hatcher family said they planned to take extra precautions against further attack.

Joanne Hatcher, 61, said she is used to getting hostile telephone calls intended for her husband, but has never taken them seriously. But after Thursday’s attack, she was particularly frightened by the idea that vandals attacked her home for the first time.

“I see the whole world becoming a racist world, and that’s everywhere, not only in Ventura County,” she said. “I felt safe up until now. Now I will lock everything up.”