NAACP Arson Seen as Part of Pattern : Violence: Civil rights officials suspect firebombing near the Capitol is linked to other recent hate crimes.

Federal authorities on Wednesday were investigating the firebombing of the NAACP office here, and national civil rights officials said the attack was part of an emerging pattern of hate crimes in California and the West.

About 2 a.m. Tuesday, an arsonist broke a window and ignited flammable liquid throughout the X Street offices of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, located about a mile south of the Capitol, police said.

The blaze caused $130,000 in damage and left the Sacramento chapter, along with adjacent dentist and medical offices, devastated.

The attack came one week after someone threw a bomb through the window of the NAACP chapter in Tacoma, Wash., and barely 24 hours after a California highway patrol officer discovered a botched Molotov cocktail burning weakly outside of B’nai Israel, a Sacramento synagogue. There was no damage to that structure.

Authorities in Seattle and Salinas, Calif., have arrested three men in connection with the Tacoma bombing, the Associated Press reported Wednesday. One man was arrested in Auburn, Wash., and two men were arrested in Salinas.

One of the men was from Minnesota, one was from Tacoma and the third was not identified.

Police have said there is no evidence linking the incidents, but public officials and civil rights advocates said they are suspicious about the timing.

“There’s an emerging pattern here that needs to be challenged,” said NAACP Executive Director Benjamin F. Chavis.

Chavis and NAACP Board Chairman William F. Gibson flew to Sacramento to consult with local officers, survey the damage and offer encouragement. They announced Wednesday that the NAACP’s 2,000 field offices would be put on security alert.

Comparing racial tensions in California and the West to those in the Deep South of “many years ago,” Chavis blamed state officials for failing to deal “proactively” with the difficult issue of ethnic diversity. The result, he said, is a resurgence of right-wing violence and racial polarization.

“If we can’t have racial harmony in a state like California, you can’t have it anywhere in the nation. . . . What we’re witnessing here are the embryonic stages of ethnic cleansing in California, and I’m concerned about it,” he said.

Both Chavis and Gibson, however, said one clear difference with the Old South was that California and federal law enforcement officials are equally outraged by the firebombings and are eager to investigate. In the old days, they said, you might not call the sheriff because he could have lit the fuse.

The fears were echoed by some of the dozens of religious leaders, civil rights advocates and politicians who stood by the NAACP leaders during a Sacramento City Hall news conference.

In calling for vigilance and racial sensitivity, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) alluded to recent derogatory comments about Latinos and Jews by two legislators, as well as an alleged plot by white supremacists to assassinate Rodney G. King and Los Angeles ethnic leaders and to bomb the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles.

Said Assemblywoman Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), chairwoman of the legislative black caucus: “California has become one of the most hateful places to live.”

Spokesmen for the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said Wednesday that both agencies were investigating leads in the incident, including the possibility that those responsible for the Sacramento bombing called a local TV station Tuesday night.

Eric Amorde, assignment manager for KXTV, said the FBI interviewed him about a man who called after his station aired its Tuesday night story about the failed attack at the synagogue and the fire at the NAACP office.

Amorde said the caller identified himself as a white supremacist and said “we missed the Jews but we got the (African-Americans).”

Amorde added that the man never took responsibility for the bombing.