Flyers Spread Message of Hate in the Valley

They seem to be everywhere, these vile racist flyers exhorting their readers to violence in defense of a white and pure nation.

They’ve shown up in school lockers and store-bought Christmas stockings from southern Los Angeles to Ventura County, in popcorn packages and children’s crayon boxes and backpacks, in soda 12-packs and pantyhose containers.

They ask, “Is the White Race Extinct?” and contain a vitriolic message about how Los Angeles and the nation are being overrun by fast-breeding immigrant “mud people” who beat, rape and murder white men and women.

Authorities say books in county libraries and bookstores also have been stamped with similar hatemongering messages. Some, like the flyers, urge readers to call a hot line linked to the White Aryan Resistance, or WAR, and to give the racial separatist group money and support.

“It scares me,” said one woman who found a flyer in an Agoura Hills Thrifty store and who asked not to be identified. “Even though it’s a minority, it’s a very violent minority. I don’t like them being around.”

The most current flyer, similar to other flyers calling for racial separatism found in the past, pose several conundrums for authorities. Among them: Why bother investigating the passing out of flyers that appear to be protected by the First Amendment, no matter how hateful? And how can you tell whether the threats are real if you don’t know who is passing out the flyers, or who is reading them? “Some people just like to state their bigoted opinion and that’s enough,” said Los Angeles Deputy Dist. Atty. Kay Shafer, who monitors hate crime activity. “Other people go further.”

No one knows if the flyers are the work of one or two racial separatists with a lot of time on their hands or organized hate groups. But some authorities worry they may signal that such groups are becoming more active and camouflaging their activities by hiding behind unsigned recruitment flyers and distributors.

There is another concern: With the recent arrest of several self-described Fourth Reich Skinheads--suspected of plotting to kill Rodney King and to commit other violent acts and murders to incite a race war--authorities now fear some elements of this radical fringe are far more dangerous than previously thought.

The flyers have prompted stores across the county--especially in the San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys--to scour their shelves and pull down whole product lines, at least until they could examine them. Headquarters of some major supermarkets and other stores have notified their managers to alert employees and security.

Police are also on the lookout, to see if there are links between those spreading leaflets and the ever-increasing number of hate crimes throughout the area. Such links are nearly impossible to prove, they say. And catching vandals defacing books and passing out flyers takes time away from investigating violent crimes, and results in misdemeanor prosecutions at best.

“These people are masters of staying right on the edge, skirting the law,” said Glendale Police Sgt. Lief Nicolaisen, an expert in WAR-affiliated white supremacists, who he says have been active recently in the foothills around Los Angeles. “By and large, they’re not real swift. But they are dangerous. . . . Certain simple-minded individuals are swayed by the message.”

Although they have been found sporadically since at least last summer, the flyers have been showing up with increasing frequency since Dec. 11, when five of them were found in a Lucky market in Canyon Country.

At least a dozen stores have been hit, some as recently as last week. They include Lucky, Vons and Ralphs markets, Toys R Us and drugstores such as Sav-On, Longs and Thrifty, police said. But no one knows how widespread the problem is because few customers report the flyers and no police agency is collecting regional statistics.

Police say most flyer activity has been in the San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys, and that they have been flooded with calls, from stores and from concerned shoppers.

Shafer, tapped by Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti to be his hate crime coordinator, is working with various police departments to investigate the flyers. And she is trying to determine if those distributing leaflets can be charged with crossing the line from free speech into committing hate crimes.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Marc R. Greenberg, lead prosecutor of the Fourth Reich defendants, said he too is looking into the flyers to see if those passing them out can be prosecuted under federal law.

Such flyers, as crude and juvenile as they may seem, he said, can often be a precursor to far more nefarious doings. Greenberg said the teen-age Fourth Reich members’ involvement in the white supremacist movement escalated from passing out similar flyers with referrals to the WAR hot line and other groups to painting swastikas to violence--including at least one firebombing and plans to blow up the First African Methodist Episcopal Church.

“The one thing that is clear is that these kids do not come up with these thoughts on their own,” Greenberg said. “Someone is influencing them.”

In recent months, Shafer said, she has had to tell police from all over the county that there is little they can do unless property is physically damaged or a flyer is targeted specifically at a minority person. Even then, a misdemeanor vandalism charge usually is all that can be filed.

Some laws prohibit people from tampering with products. Another misdemeanor code prohibits people from using “offensive words in a public place which are inherently likely to provoke an immediate violent reaction.” That law apparently has not been tested in such cases. And authorities would have to catch someone in the act before deciding to prosecute them.

“It’s frustrating,” said Sheriff’s Detective Jerry Johnson in the Santa Clarita Valley, who has received many reports of racist flyers. “These things take days to investigate and we don’t have the time. But you can’t ignore it.”

“There is freedom of speech,” Johnson said, “but you still can’t say fire in a movie theater or say something that will incite violence. And this advocates violence.”

To many, the most recent flyer is certainly enough to prompt a violent reaction. It contains a crude drawing of a pregnant Latina with a baby that is already pregnant, saying minorities are reproducing so fast that whites are in jeopardy. “It is trying to destroy you,” the flyers say of the rising minority population, “and it will succeed unless you fight back VIOLENTLY.”

The flyer advocates the expulsion, within 30 days, of all nonwhites from the United States, to preserve the purity of the Aryan race. And it urges everyone, particularly women, to take matters into their own hands: “You may not have the strength to swing a bat, but you can buy a large can of Mace,” and spray any white person and minority seen in public together.

The phone number on the flyer leads to another number of the WAR hot line. WAR is run by former state Ku Klux Klan leader Tom Metzger, a toupee-wearing television repairman who lives an hour north of San Diego and boasts of having followers all over the world.

Metzger keeps in touch with WAR followers in Los Angeles, he said in an interview, and sometimes visits the area. Most notably, he came to the Valley in 1983 for a WAR cross burning, for which he was arrested. Three years later, he led a controversial meeting for local WAR members at a popular San Fernando restaurant.

In recent years, however, he has limited his direct involvement with WAR followers after a Portland, Ore., jury found him personally liable for $12.5 million for inciting skinheads who later confessed to beating an Ethiopian man to death.

Metzger, 54, now promotes a “leaderless revolution” in which he isn’t visible enough to be a lightning rod for civil and legal troubles. Although he says he knows many of the WAR activists in Los Angeles, Metzger said he does not control them or urge them to commit violence.

“Saying one group is responsible would be giving me too much credit,” he said. “But we do our little bit to make white people aware of the dangers they are facing.

“I’m sure material gets distributed all over the country with our name stamped on it,” Metzger said, “and for the most part, we say that’s great. I’ve done it for years.”

Some watchdog groups fear WAR leaders stay an arm’s length away from committing violence by using impressionable followers to carry out their goals. The Anti-Defamation League of B’Nai B’Rith has long accused WAR of trying to expand by recruiting skinheads and other impressionable youngsters through flyers and other means.

“We need to take whatever action is possible to stop these people,” the ADL’s Valley coordinator, Mary Krasn, said of the flyers.

So far, police are seeking a warrant for the arrest of one man in connection with an incident at Simi Valley High School in which he punched a janitor who tried to stop him from putting the racist flyer in student lockers at night. The suspect, Allan Carlson, 30, of Glendale, was arrested in August on suspicion of vandalizing books in a Covina bookstore with hate messages. Police said they also found racist paraphernalia in his car, along with a list of targeted stores from around the county. Carlson has pleaded not guilty.

But authorities say one man couldn’t have put out all the flyers that have been found recently.

“It makes me sick,” said an employee of a Sav-On, who found some of the first flyers. “I couldn’t believe it. Especially out here. I always felt really comfortable about the people living in this community.”

Hate Flyers

Recent incidents related to racist flyers and other acts of vandalism in northern Los Angeles County include:

February, 1989--Vandals spray-paint swastikas and “Skins Are Back” on an Encino temple and put WAR stickers, reading “White men built this nation and white men are this nation,” in mailboxes.

April 21, 1992--About 150 anti-Semitic and anti-black flyers are placed in lockers at Nobel Junior High School in Northridge, linked to a group called the National Socialist White American Party.

June 4, 1992--Racist flyers are found inside lockers at Burbank High School, containing anti-black and anti-female messages and phone numbers for the WAR hot line.

Aug. 21, 1993--About 180 notebooks are pulled from K mart stores in Burbank and Sunland after customers find white supremacist messages in them.

Aug. 28, 1993--Allan E. Carlson, 30, of Glendale, is arrested at a Covina market on suspicion of vandalism. Police say he was using a rubber stamp to imprint white supremacist messages in dozens of notebooks.

Dec. 2, 1993--A black Saugus High School student is beaten by a group of white students who taunted him with racial slurs, a day after he gave a speech in class about the dangers of racial prejudice.

Dec. 11, 1993--Five flyers attacking Latinos and other nonwhites are discovered stuffed inside soda packs at a Lucky supermarket in Canyon Country.

Dec. 11, 1993--Flyers are found, including one in a Christmas stocking, at a Sav-On drugstore in Canyon Country; one woman returns with it, saying she almost gave it unwittingly to her grandson.

Dec. 12, 1993--Flyers are found in children’s backpacks at a Target store in Valencia.

Dec. 15, 1993--Flyers are found in cosmetic products at a Ralphs in Reseda.

Dec. 22, 1993--Flyers are discovered in 12-packs of beer at a Lucky store and in soda 12-packs at a Vons in Palmdale.