THE KING CASE AFTERMATH : Forums to Deal With Racism, Justice System

Although Ventura County has gone untouched by the rioting that swept across parts of Los Angeles last week, the potential for violence still remains here, a coalition of county leaders said Wednesday.

To counteract that danger, 15 members of the newly formed Concerned Residents of Ventura County announced that they are starting a series of public forums aimed at allowing county residents to air their views about the jury’s decision in a peaceful manner.

The first forum is scheduled for 7 p.m. tonight at St. Paul Baptist Church in Oxnard.

Besides giving citizens a grass-roots forum to state their opinions on the not-guilty verdicts in the Rodney G. King beating case, the workshops will provide a method for finding local solutions to racial prejudice, said the Rev. Broderick Huggins, a spokesman for the multiracial panel that includes preachers, politicians, sheriff’s deputies and business owners.

Ventura County residents need to be able to voice their “reactions, frustrations and feelings concerning the ongoing social problems and failures in the justice system brought into focus by the King case,” Huggins said.

“It is also essential that the voice be loud enough to be heard but not use the amplifier of violence to make it heard,” he said.

The threat of violence in Ventura County is still very real, said the Rev. Albert Southall, the pastor of Evangelistic Baptist Church in Port Hueneme.

Southall told reporters that a “reliable street source” in South Los Angeles called him Tuesday night and said the word is out that Ventura County may be the next target for rioters.

“We’re not out of the woods yet,” Southall said.

A sheriff’s official said that although his office has received up to 350 reports of threatened violence since the verdicts were delivered at the East County Courthouse in Simi Valley a week ago, no riot-related crime has been reported anywhere. Municipal law enforcement agencies say they have not seen any evidence that the unrest has crossed the county line.

“None of it has panned out at all,” Sheriff’s Lt. Michael Pitts said.

Still, coalition leaders said, holding the forums will help ensure that an uprising does not develop locally. It will also give residents a chance to show that the jury in the King case “neither collectively nor individually represents the greater community of Ventura County,” Huggins said.

Gary Windom, a county public defender and panel member, agreed.

“We want the nation to know the people of Ventura County are not all racist, that we are concerned about this verdict and we plan to do something about it,” he said.

Other members of the committee include County Supervisor John K. Flynn, Oxnard City Councilwoman Dorothy S. Maron, Oxnard Union High School District Trustee Bedford Pinkard and Sgt. Kenton Rainey and Deputy Kim Garrett of the county Sheriff’s Department.

Windom said the black community in Ventura County is concerned not only with the King verdicts, but with what it sees as a pattern of discrimination against African-Americans in the court system.

He cited the decision last week by the Ventura County district attorney’s office to drop a murder charge against a man who shot Timothy Moss, a black 17-year-old from Oxnard, during an altercation at a party. Prosecutors concluded that the killing was in self-defense.

“What the people are saying is . . . justice is not meted out to people using the same yardstick,” Windom said.