11 Youths Accused of Extortion : Crime: The suspects are Asian-Americans, as are most of the victims at three Arcadia junior high schools. Police are looking for a possible gang connection.

Eleven Arcadia youths have been arrested on charges of threatening to beat up students at three local junior high schools if they failed to pay a $5 weekly “protection” fee, police said Thursday.

Officers were investigating a possible link between Asian-American gangs and the extortion suspects who allegedly targeted mostly Asian-American children, said Capt. David Hinig of the Arcadia Police Department.

“Asian gangs very frequently use extortive techniques to obtain money or goods from businessmen and other persons, especially in the Asian community,” Hinig said, adding that adult gang members are believed to be behind the teen-age extortion ring that was broken up by the arrests Wednesday.

Police would not say how many young people were allegedly threatened, only that there are still a “substantial” number of victims yet to come forward. All but one of the known victims is of Asian descent, officers said.

Hinig said he did not know how much extortion money was collected, but apparently none of the suspects made good on their threats of bodily harm.

The arrests ended a two-month investigation at 1st Avenue, Foothills and Dana junior high schools in Arcadia.

Nine of the suspects, all boys 15 or 16 years old, were arrested at Arcadia High School, where they are students. Two other boys were arrested at a nearby home. One is a student at El Rancho Continuation High School, and the other was a recent Arcadia High dropout.

Names of the suspects, all of Asian descent, were not released because they are juveniles. Eight were booked for investigation of conspiracy to commit extortion, and three for investigation of making terrorist threats. All were released to the custody of parents or guardians, pending further investigation and the filing of charges with Los Angeles County juvenile authorities, police said.

The Arcadia High School students have been suspended until the investigation is over, Principal Dorothy Schneider said Thursday.

“What disturbed me the most was that we would have students who would be ruthless enough to terrorize younger children,” Schneider said of the allegations against the suspects.

Some of the victims are receiving counseling, school district officials said.

Officials got wind of something amiss when Asian-American students started disappearing in large numbers from campuses as soon as the bell rang ending the school day. Usually, many students linger to play basketball or roller skate on the playground, said Beverly Rodriguez, principal of 1st Avenue Junior High School.

“They were very frightened they were going to be hurt somehow,” Rodriguez said.

A few students confided their fears to teachers, police were notified, and officers began staking out the school, Rodriguez said.

In Los Angeles, police recently beefed up patrols in the Pico-Union district after sidewalk vendors reported that Latino gang members extorted as much as $10 a week in protection money from them. Street vending is illegal, and many of the merchants are illegal immigrants, so most of them wanted to avoid contact with police.