Task Force Has ‘Zero Tolerance for Intolerance’

Reacting to two highly publicized hate crimes in the South County area, the City Council voted Monday to form an anti-hate crime task force to combat racial harassment and provide support to the victims.

The council voted unanimously to create a five-member panel that will consider taking a series of steps, including the hiring of a special legal counsel to prosecute misdemeanor race crimes such as cross-burning and establishing a 24-hour hot line for reporting hate crimes.

The council’s action follows several unrelated racial incidents in the area last week, including the assault of a black 12-year-old boy by a white adult in Mission Viejo, the spraying of racial graffiti on the lawn of a Jewish family in nearby Rancho Santa Margarita and a black businessman’s claims that he was assaulted at John Wayne Airport.

“We don’t want Mission Viejo to be a bastion for bigotry,” said Councilman Robert D. Breton. “We have to send out the message that we will have zero tolerance for intolerance. . . . Anyone committing hate crimes here will pay dearly for it.”

The panel will include George Williams, president of the Orange County Urban League, and Michael Kelner, executive director of Heritage Point, a Jewish retirement community in the city. Breton and Mayor Robert A. Curtis also will join the task force, and a fifth member will be named later.

The panel was proposed by Curtis, who said he wanted to prevent further racial incidents and “make it clear to everyone that South Orange Countians . . . will not tolerate hatred and bigotry.”

“Orange County comprises good, hard-working people,” Curtis said. “Orange County has no place for this type of hatemongering.”

Breton, a prosecutor for the state attorney general’s office, had sponsored an anti-hate crime resolution that the council passed two months ago because he perceived a growing problem with racially motivated crimes throughout the state.

Breton said the city might want to prosecute misdemeanor hate crimes “so there will be no plea bargaining and we can push for maximum punishment with no probation.”

The task force also will look into starting a hot line for hate crime informants, he said.

“What is reported now is just the tip of the iceberg,” Breton said. “We need to make victims feel safe and secure so they report these incidents without fear of retaliation and reprisal.”

Other steps the task force might recommend to combat hate crime include:

* Establishing a program with the county or private mental health agency to provide counseling for victims of hate crimes.

* Working with state legislators to increase penalties for all hate crimes.

* Setting up an educational program with local school districts to educate children on race relations.

* Urging the county district attorney’s office to create a special division to handle hate crimes.

In the recent hate crime cases, a 28-year-old El Toro man was arraigned Friday for allegedly hitting a black Mission Viejo boy. Sheriff’s investigators say the suspect was incensed because the 12-year-old was walking with two white girls.

Sheriff’s investigators also are trying to learn the identities of at least six youths who sprayed the word Jew with shaving cream on the lawn of a Jewish family in Rancho Santa Margarita last week.

In the John Wayne Airport case, the district attorney’s office decided last week that there was insufficient evidence to support the contention by a black businessman that he was battered to the ground by a white man while waiting for a ride outside the airport.

Taken together, the cases raised concern among officials that the number of racially motivated crimes was on the rise.

“What’s happening out there is definitely on the increase as our county is getting more and more diverse,” said Rusty Kennedy, director of the county Human Relations Commission.

Kennedy applauded the establishment of the task force, calling it a unique approach among the county’s 29 cities. “It’s definitely a positive thing to do. I don’t think any other city has taken exactly these steps,” he said.

Mission Viejo has been the scene of several racial disturbances in the last year, Kennedy said.

In February, someone broke into the home of a family and spray-painted “Arabs go home, you will die” throughout the house, Kennedy said.

Last August, vandals spray-painted anti-Semitic slogans at the Heritage Pointe Jewish rest home. The retirement community also received phone threats during the war with Iraq.

“I think the move the city of Mission Viejo is taking is clearly a stand-up approach,” Kelner said. “I’m more than willing to participate in the task force because this issue is so very important. You’ve got to stand up and be counted.”