Hate Crimes Ruin a Dream Neighborhood : Bigotry: Laurie Martin endured nine months of torment before bullets made her flee her Azusa home. She is among several blacks who have been attacked by Latinos in the working-class city this year.

Laurie Martin thought she had found her dream neighborhood.

It was a quiet, tree-lined street in Azusa with a rental home large enough for her family, including her three children and her brother. As a bonus, it would put miles between her and her former northwest Pasadena neighborhood, where she had seen, and heard about, too much gang-related violence and deaths.

But that dream faded quickly last January, when a rock-carrying Latino boy threatened her as she moved her belongings into the home on Pasadena Avenue.

It was just the beginning, said Martin, 30, an African-American. Taunts, graffiti, rock-throwing, racial slurs and threats became part of the regular torment she and her family endured for nine more months, while their complaints to police were shrugged off, Martin alleges. Still, she stood her ground.

“I thought: ‘They’re not going to make me move,’ ” Martin said.

But after eight bullets ripped into her home at dusk Sept. 21, forcing her to hit the floor with her 2-year-old son in her arms, Martin finally fled Azusa.

Martin’s experience is part of a wave of hate crimes involving Latinos attacking blacks this year in Azusa, said Bunny Hatcher, a senior consultant with the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission.

Nine hate crimes committed by Latinos against blacks were logged by the commission, compared to only two hate crimes of any kind last year in the mostly working-class city of 41,333 nestled at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains. There was one report of blacks attacking Latinos this year, Hatcher said.

Many crimes came as the number of blacks moving to the city has increased, especially, school officials said, since the riots in Los Angeles. Sometimes, they were not welcomed.

The Azusa crimes involved mainly Latino youths who hurled racial slurs, stabbed one black man, threw bottles at a group of African-American youths and attacked another black man. In one instance, three Latinas attacked a black man.

“There are always hot spots,” Hatcher said of the Azusa crimes. “Jews in North Hollywood got hit one year and it never occurred again. One year it was Catholic churches because of their stand on condoms and abortion. Arabs were targets during the Gulf War.

“Anyone who thinks that their neighborhood is immune is kidding themselves,” Hatcher said, adding that the commission tallied 672 hate crimes countywide last year.

One reason for the problems this year might be economic competition, said Jimmie Dixson, president of the East San Gabriel Valley branch of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. Over the past eight months, as the recession has lingered, Dixson said his group has received a number of hate phone calls from Latinos shouting obscenities against blacks.

“Where you have two minority groups vying for the same opportunities, these things occur,” Dixson said.

Inez Z. Gutierrez, a 21-year-veteran of the Azusa Unified School Board and its president, called the hate crimes a territorial issue among some of the town’s young Latino gang members. “They don’t want other kids coming in,” Gutierrez said.

Azusa Mayor Eugene F. Moses, agreed, saying that “as times get tougher, everybody gets tougher in general.” As a recent appointee to the League of California Cities’ Hate Crime Committee, Moses said he is determined to stop the behavior.

The mayor met with Dixson and the Azusa police chief last week and plans to meet soon with the school board. A community task force will be created to prevent more hate crimes and to involve all city groups in combatting them, Moses said.

Azusa is dubbed the Canyon City because California 39 runs through its heart leading north into San Gabriel Canyon and Angeles National Forest. It nonetheless remains a flat sprawl of featureless commercial buildings clustered around Foothill Boulevard and railroad tracks.

Although it boasts a charming Mediterranean-style City Hall, Azusa has not managed to latch onto the foothill cachet prized by neighboring Duarte and Glendora. Median annual family incomes in Azusa range from $23,000 to $30,000, according to the 1990 U.S. Census, compared to between $30,000 and $50,000 in the other two cities.

Unlike the other two cities, Azusa has undergone a dramatic shift in its black population, which has grown by 283% since 1980 to 1,421, according to the 1990 census. By comparison during the same period, neighboring Duarte’s black population grew by 19% to 1,766, while Glendora’s black population grew by 183% to 98.

According to the census, Azusa had 22,092 (53%) Latino residents, 14,980 (36%) whites and 2,583 Asians (2%).

Azusa school officials noticed the influx of black families and began offering special programs, said Bonnie Blum, senior director of pupil services for the Azusa Unified School District.

Along with the new population came new problems, Blum said, when students failed to respect one another and their differences. Student disputes began occurring off and on campus, she said.

In response, the district is instituting Operation Handshake, to honor students whose actions improve human relations.

Martin is back in northwest Pasadena, the gang-plagued neighborhood with a predominantly low-income, African-American and Latino population. And she is homeless, alternating between her grandmother’s and mother’s homes. She said she has retained a lawyer and is contemplating taking legal action against the Azusa Police Department, which she alleges offered her indifference instead of protection.

But Azusa police deny that a wave of race-related crimes has plagued their city.

Operations Capt. Bob Garcia attributed the increase in hate crimes logged by the commission to the hiring in April of a special gang and hate-crime officer who keeps track of such crimes. Before, the city probably would have logged such crimes only as assaults, he said.

As for Martin’s allegations, Garcia said Azusa’s 57-officer force provided the best service it could. Four investigators were assigned to the Sept. 21 shooting. Martin’s neighbors, many of whom were outside at the time, told officers they witnessed nothing.

“We can only proceed if we get cooperation,” Garcia said.

Azusa police take hate crimes seriously, Garcia said. Of the eight hate crimes reported before the Martin shooting, suspects were arrested in four, he said.

Nine juveniles were arrested and charged with assault with a deadly weapon, street terrorism or violating an individual’s civil rights. Two suspects were sentenced to state prison terms of four years each. Court proceedings are pending against suspects in three cases, Garcia said.

Such statistics are cold comfort to Martin, who said she moved from Pasadena to Covina and lived there, peacefully, for a year and a half before going to Azusa.

Martin was unaware of the demographic changes her new city was undergoing, until she moved to Pasadena Avenue--a neighborhood Azusa police say has a moderate level of Latino gang activity.

Youthful gang members, Martin said, immediately scrawled graffiti on her wall. But when she called police, she said the officers only advised her to avoid shopping in the neighborhood stores because of the danger from gangs.

Her 10-year-old daughter, Cortney, was threatened at knifepoint by one youth. But when she summoned police again, Martin said officers simply said they would speak to the boy’s parents.

“Every time I called them, nothing was done,” Martin said.

Martin also said her car was pelted with rocks and bottles when she drove through the neighborhood; her children endured racial slurs as they walked home from school, and her 16-year-old brother, Eric Roberts, was challenged numerous times by young Latinos who ran off when Martin stepped into the front yard.

Martin’s Azusa neighbor, Debra Judge, also an African-American, said she was similarly harassed during her three years on the same street with her four children.

In July, Judge’s 19-year-old daughter was stopped at an intersection by Latino gang members who threatened her and scratched a racial slur into the side of her car, Judge said. She said she would have left then if she had had the money to move. She is now living with her mother in Los Angeles.

For Martin, the Sept. 21 shooting escalated the problems to dangerous levels. Two youths on bicycles rode past her house about 6 p.m. and opened fire, police said. Five bullets pierced the garage, where Roberts kept his stereo equipment. Three bullets tore into the house, one lodging in the wall behind the kitchen refrigerator, Martin said.

Judge and Martin left that night with only their clothes and minor possessions, Martin said. Weeks later, when she returned to retrieve her furniture, Martin said she found the door open, more graffiti on the outside walls and the interior walls smeared with mustard and lipstick.

Joe Hopkins, a Pasadena attorney who represents both women, said police inaction permitted the Latino gangs to kick the women and their families out of the neighborhood.

“If you allow gangs to dictate where people should live, then you have a problem,” he said.

“They don’t want any blacks in their neighborhood,” Judge said. “We moved real close to the barrio, and they don’t want us there.’