2 Identified as Skinheads Are Arrested in Racial Beating : Assault: Police accuse a boy and a girl, both 17, of attacking a Chinese-American teen-ager and two friends in a Fullerton park.

Two 17-year-old youths, identified by police as members of an Orange County skinhead gang, have been arrested and charged in the beating of a Chinese-American teen-ager and two white friends in a park, authorities announced Wednesday.

Police said the suspects, a Whittier boy and a Huntington Beach girl, were charged with aggravated assault and violation of civil rights in the July 7 incident in which a group of 15 skinheads attacked three youths in Fullerton’s Gilman Park.

According to authorities, the suspects belong to a white supremacist group with about 20 members in Orange County and known by the initials CFA, which stands for Confederate Federation of America. The youths were being held in Orange County Juvenile Hall on Wednesday and were expected to appear in court later this week. Their names are being withheld by authorities because both are juveniles.

Police gang specialists said the CFA is affiliated with the White Aryan Resistance, a national white supremacist group. Police said they expect to make additional arrests in connection with the crime.

During the recent beating which police said left a 17-year-old Chinese-American unconscious, the skinheads allegedly shouted racial slurs and gave Nazi salutes before rushing the three victims and kicking and punching them. The Chinese-American boy’s injuries required emergency room treatment.

The beating incident occurred amid an increase in the number of reported hate crimes in Orange County since January. In the last three weeks, the word Jew was sprayed in 3-foot-high letters on the lawn of a Jewish family’s home in Santa Margarita; a white man was arrested for allegedly attacking a black child and yelling racial slurs at him; and a black man said he was verbally assaulted and knocked to the ground by three men at John Wayne Airport.

In an unusual twist in the beating case, the arrests were made when two Fullerton police detectives went to Superior Court in Santa Ana to obtain arrest warrants for four of the people allegedly involved in the beating. Once there, they spotted two of the suspects who apparently had gone to the courthouse to attend a hearing for two other skinheads charged in a Huntington Beach stabbing, according to police.

Police also revealed Wednesday that three hours before the Fullerton incident, the same group of youths had allegedly harassed a black family that had been fishing at Tri-City Park in Placentia. However, Fullerton police did not learn of that incident until five days later, after a chance conversation between Placentia Police Chief Manuel Ortega and Rusty Kennedy, executive director of the Orange County Human Relations Commission.

“Our chief, Chief Manuel Ortega, was speaking to Mr. Kennedy when Mr. Kennedy brought up the incident in Fullerton,” said Placentia police spokeswoman Corinne Loomis. “Our chief said, ‘That sounds like it could be related to the subjects that were detained at our Tri-City Park on the same day.’ ”

In the Tri-City Park incident, Placentia police received an anonymous tip that a group of about 15 skinheads was taunting a black family in the park, according to officials.

“They had surrounded the family and were teasing them but there was no crime committed in terms of obvious assault,” Loomis said. “All they could do is document the incident and identify the subjects.”

Loomis said the officers photographed the youths and recorded their names and addresses. Upon learning that the case might be related to the Fullerton incident, Placentia police forwarded the photographs taken at Tri-City Park to Fullerton authorities.

According to Fullerton Police Capt. Lee Devore, the Chinese-American teen-ager injured in the incident and his two companions identified four of their alleged assailants from the photographs Saturday.

Detectives got a break Tuesday when Fullerton Police Detectives Tom Basham and Bob Richardson happened upon two of the suspects at the Santa Ana courthouse. The officers were about to take the elevator to the warrants division on the fifth floor when they recognized two suspects walking off another elevator.

Basham said he and Richardson followed the female suspect and two male companions into the cafeteria and watched them buy food. “We realized they were going to be there for a while so we got on the elevator and went upstairs to drop off our paperwork,” Basham said. “As soon as the door opened up I saw another one of the suspects we wanted to arrest sitting there in the hallway.”

A short while later, the detectives arrested both suspects in the courthouse cafeteria.

According to police, the two youths had come to the courthouse to attend a hearing for two juveniles accused in a July 12 strong-arm robbery and stabbing of a 40-year-old man at the intersection of Newman and Van Buren streets in Huntington Beach.

“They (the suspects) had wanted to all be there for the hearing,” Basham said. “But what happened is, by a fluke of luck, they were late for the hearing and weren’t able to get in. If they had made the hearing, we would have missed them altogether.”

The Chinese-American youth declined to discuss the arrests Wednesday. “I just have no comment,” said the recent Sunny Hills High School graduate, who has not been identified because he fears for his safety.

Until the recent incidents, skinhead activity appeared to be on the decline in the county, according to gang specialists.

“We thought they were kind of dying out but then we had a stabbing last weekend and another strong-arm robbery that we think is them,” said Huntington Beach Detective R.K. Miller, who monitors gang activity throughout the county.

According to police, it is unclear how many different skinhead groups are active.

“They wander around from city to city,” said Fullerton Police Lt. Bob Jones. “They’ll just kind of disappear and then all of a sudden you start seeing stuff posted on telephone poles antagonizing blacks or someone else.”

There have been 34 reported hate-related incidents in Orange County since January, ranging from harassing telephone calls to beatings--up from 16 in 1990. While hate crimes have touched all races, much of the reported surge is attributed to a backlash against people of the Middle East during the Gulf War.