Armed-Patrol Plan Draws Fire : Crime: The Jewish Defense League announces its plan after a Lomita home is vandalized with white supremacist graffiti. Some object to the plan.

When the Lomita home of Dr. Shlomo and Janis Elspas was defaced with white supremacist graffiti last week, the couple received dozens of calls and visits from friends and neighbors expressing sorrow and outrage.

Sheriff’s officials said they would immediately increase their surveillance of the area.

But Monday, when Jewish Defense League leaders announced at a Lomita City Council meeting that they would conduct armed patrols of the Elspases’ quiet, working-class neighborhood, there was an almost equal outcry from residents, council members and Sheriff’s Department officials. Some said they feared possible confrontations with gang members, among other concerns.

Mayor Pete Rossick was among those objecting to the patrols, saying, “Vigilantes disappeared years ago.”

Irv Rubin, national chairman of the Jewish Defense League, told the City Council on Monday that the Lomita patrols are not a vigilante effort but are necessary for self-defense.

“Understand that this is one Jew who is not going to turn the other cheek,” Rubin said. “My Bible teaches me that if someone comes to slay you, you rise up early and slay him first.”

Rubin said the JDL is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the vandals who defaced the Elspases’ Moon Avenue home.

JDL officials said Wednesday that members of the organization had begun periodic armed patrols, confined to nighttime drives through the neighborhood. But plans were under way to form a community patrol that would also include South Bay residents, and Rubin said more frequent patrols are expected to begin Friday.

The JDL, founded in Brooklyn in 1968 in response to attacks on Jews by muggers, has sponsored patrols of Jewish neighborhoods across the United States, including the Fairfax District of Los Angeles.

Rubin said Wednesday that residents’ fears of vigilantism are unfounded.

“As I said to the City Council, those (armed) members are licensed by the state of California,” Rubin said. “They are fully accredited and carry a concealed weapons permit.”

Shlomo Elspas, executive governor of the Chabad of South Bay, said his house has been attacked nine times since he and his wife moved in. Windows have been broken, and graffiti, apparently gang-related, has been sprayed on a wall facing an alley.

The Elspases have lived in the Lomita area for five years and built their two-story home on Moon Avenue because it is within walking distance of their Orthodox Jewish synagogue.

Some of the Elspases’ neighbors expressed alarm at the prospect of armed civilians patrolling the street. Many others said the supremacist graffiti--a large swastika and the words “white power”--were a juvenile prank. And the wall facing the alley, some neighbors say, is all but a chalkboard for gang members in the area.

Laurie Newburn, though sympathetic to the Elspases’ plight, called the patrols “a bad idea.”

“I think it’s a little bit too dramatic,” Newburn said. “I’m in favor of a Neighborhood Watch. I think everybody here would support that.”

An armed patrol, Newburn said, could provoke a violent confrontation, particularly with area gangs.

Beth Gorton, who lives on Moon Avenue with her sister and her sister’s four children, said she understood the need for patrols but worried about innocent bystanders being caught in the cross-fire that could occur during a shootout.

“They have a right to defend themselves, but how far do you take that?” Gorton said, adding that she did not oppose unarmed patrols.

John and Kathy Osmond were also concerned about the possibility of shots being exchanged.

“I don’t like that at all,” John Osmond said of the plan for armed patrols. “He (Elspas) has a right to defend himself, but not control the whole street.”

However, Steve Jett, who has lived on Moon Avenue for 11 years, said he thinks the Elspases’ response is justified.

“I wouldn’t blame him at all,” Jett said. “It’s just too bad that it has to come to that.”

Cyndy Grant, vice president of the Parent Teachers Assn. of Lomita Fundamental Magnet School, across the street from the Elspas residence, said the thought of armed patrols “scares me to death.”

“It makes me literally sick to my stomach to think that you would even consider it,” she told Shlomo Elspas at Monday’s council meeting. “It makes me really emotional because I would hate to see any one of those children injured. . . . I am really very, very sorry for what happened, but don’t, don’t walk the streets with handguns.”

At the meeting, Rubin defended the use of armed patrols, saying that people who paint swastikas are likely to be armed themselves.

“When somebody puts up that swastika, they are saying, ‘We’re going to finish what Hitler started,’ ” Rubin said.

He said protection by the Sheriff’s Department is inadequate and lashed out at the city for mailing what he termed an insensitive and unnecessary letter.

The letter, sent by the city’s code enforcement officer as standard procedure whenever a home is defaced by graffiti, requested that the graffiti be removed immediately.

It was received on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath.

City Administrator Walker Ritter, after reading the letter to the council, said, “I think it’s a very nice letter.”

Rubin and Elspas disagreed.

“This is the most incredibly insane letter that I’ve seen in my life; as though a Jew wants a swastika on his house,” Rubin said.

The City Council unanimously approved drafting a letter of support for the Elspases but said it should not be considered an apology.

Mayor Rossick called the graffiti attack on the Elspases “repugnant.”

“Graffiti has really been pervading our area in the last few months,” Rossick said. “We’re trying to get rid of it as fast as we can. We’ve learned from experience that if you leave the stuff up there, you’re going to get a lot more of it.”