LOS ALAMITOS : Racist Flyers Found Again at High School

Police are investigating a second incident in which Nazi-type, racist literature was placed in student lockers at Los Alamitos High School.

Most of the students have not returned from winter break, but freshman Kasey Riley went to the school to pick up a book and discovered a flyer in her locker.

“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” she said.

Police Cmdr. Gary Biggerstaff said Tuesday that a search of lockers turned up more than 30 of the flyers, which had a Lincoln, Neb., address.

Biggerstaff said investigators believe that a student or someone associated with the school is placing the flyers in the lockers.

Principal Carol Hart said the incidents were the only ones of their kind that she could recall in her eight years at the school, which has a student population of more than 2,300.

“When it happened the first time, the students didn’t like it at all,” Hart said. The first incident occurred Dec. 7. Lockers and walls were painted with epithets and flyers placed in the lockers.

Keith Polakoff, president of the Los Alamitos school board, said the same type of literature was found Monday.

“It was a classic piece of Nazi, skinhead, hate literature complete with a swastika,” Polakoff said. “It was the exact same flyer.”

Gayle Byrne, a spokeswoman for the Orange County American Jewish Committee, said Los Alamitos High was not the only school targeted in the county this year.

“We have found white-supremacist literature at Ocean View and at Orange High schools,” Byrne said.

Rusty Kennedy, executive director of the Orange County Human Relations Commission, said more than 100 hate-related incidents were reported last year alone.

Kennedy said that until two years ago many of the hate-crime incidents were not reported to the county. But now there is an organization where the different police chiefs compile their statistics for investigative purposes.

“In 1991, we organized a hate-crime network and a hate-crime-victims’ group,” Kennedy said. “There were 125 hate crimes reported against blacks, Jews, Hispanics, gays, Asians, Arabs, and there were probably more (in 1992) but we haven’t compiled all of the statistics yet.”

Hart said that as a result of the first incident, the high school contacted parents, faculty and city officials to meet and talk about the problem.

“The students want ethnic harmony on the campus. They feel very strongly about that,” Hart said.

Byrne agreed with the school’s plans to let the students and the public discuss the problem. She also said some schools hide hate crimes and that doing that produces worse results.

“By trying to ignore the problem, it makes the schools seem like they are condoning the act instead of condemning it,” Byrne said. “These are cowards who are doing this.”