3 Arrested in Anti-Semitic Vandalism : Crime: Authorities to charge three young men in the desecration of Del Cerro synagogue and two other buildings.

San Diego police arrested three young men Wednesday in connection with three acts of anti-Semitic vandalism, including one recent attack that left a Del Cerro synagogue covered with spray-painted swastikas and dozens of crude epithets.

Those arrested were Daron Edward Stinton, 18, who lives in the 6000 block of Hillandale Court in San Carlos; Jeffrey Miles, 18, who lives in the 6000 block of Carthage Street in Allied Gardens, and Marc Edward Lee, 19, who lives in the 5500 block of Elgin Avenue in Allied Gardens. The three were booked into County Jail on suspicion of three counts of hate crimes and will be arraigned Friday, police said.

The other two incidents occurred within 24 hours of the Aug. 21 attack on Temple Emanu-El, a reform synagogue in the 6200 block of Capri Drive in Del Cerro, across Interstate 8 from San Diego State University.

Anti-Semitic graffiti was scrawled in a children’s playroom in a condominium complex in the 3400 block of Mission Mesa Way in San Carlos and in an unoccupied home in the 6200 block of Caminito Corto in the same area.

Investigators said that in each of the three incidents, “the paint, the colors and the writing” matched. Two Crime Stoppers tips led to possible suspects, police said, with an anonymous source coming forward Friday that led to the three.

Stinton and Miles were released Wednesday after posting $15,000 bail, while Lee remained incarcerated. Bail for Lee is also set at $15,000.

In conjunction with Temple Emanu-El, the San Diego chapter of the Anti-Defamation League offered a $10,000 reward leading to “the arrest and conviction” of those responsible for desecrating the synagogue.

Morris Casuto, executive director of the group’s local chapter, said the arrests “send an important message to the haters. If they commit deeds like this, they should be aware that the law-enforcement agencies in the county will look for them continuously.

“And they better remain silent, because if they boast of their deeds they will be sought and caught and prosecuted. If they knew anything at all about the Jewish community, they should have known that the last thing we’d do is roll over and hide.”

Police detective Gomez said he believed the crimes were committed by “individuals with individual motives,” and not as the outgrowth of a racist underground movement, such as Tom Metzger’s Fallbrook-based White Aryan Resistance.

“This is a national pattern,” Casuto said. “More and more, these crimes are committed by individuals rather than groups.”

Casuto said the undetermined dollar damage to the synagogue was not as severe as the $5,000 in damages inflicted on the Tifereth Israel Synagogue in a 1988 attack in San Carlos, but that the psychological impact of such incidents is always devastating.

“In that respect, the trauma is not so easily cleansed or erased,” Casuto said. “For someone who survived the Holocaust, (such an attack) renews the terror, the trauma, the horror of those times.

“In addition to that, anyone’s house of worship is a sanctuary, a place of peace. People go there to fulfill a religious obligation to God. It’s not going to stop Jewish people from fulfilling their faith, but they don’t come to the synagogue with the same sense of serenity.”

After the November, 1988, attack on Tifereth Israel, five San Diego minors were asked to perform “a few hours of community service” and ordered by Juvenile Court to pay restitution ranging from $20 to $25 per defendant.

The 16-year-old ringleader of the attack, who lived in Chatsworth in the San Fernando Valley, was ordered to perform 200 hours of community service and pay $135 in restitution. All were later sued in a civil action brought by a San Carlos woman whose home they also desecrated.

After that incident, Jewish leaders and community groups expressed outrage about the leniency of the sentences, and the San Diego Police Department promised renewed vigor in apprehending and prosecuting the perpetrators of hate crimes.

Investigator Gomez said that two of the suspects in the latest incident, Lee and Stinton, are students at Grossmont College and that Miles attends the Navajo Adult Education Center on the grounds of Patrick Henry High School.

He said the three expressed “some remorse” for what they did.

The confluence of swastikas and “SS” Nazi lightning bolts, as well as dozens of other obscene and anti-Semitic references, tied the suspects, he said, to the three areas targeted in the spree. He declined to comment on numerous references to “Stoner” at each location.

After the Aug. 21 attack on the synagogue, Casuto said he was unsure of the origin of “Stoner,” though it once served as the name of a white, racist gang operating in other parts of the country.

“I really can’t say what their motives were,” investigator Gomez said. “I would assume it was more or less a spur-of-the-moment-type thing. It may have been one of those things where they said, ‘Let’s go ahead and do it as a one-time shot,’ but I really don’t know. It was definitely anti-Semitic and definitely a hate crime.”