GLENDALE : Mayor Names Panel to Probe Hate Crime

Glendale Mayor Eileen Givens announced this week the members of a Community Relations Task Force formed at the request of local Armenian groups to investigate a hate crime at an Armenian-American youth center last month.

The task force will meet several times, with its first meeting scheduled in the next two weeks, Givens said.

The committee is charged with recommending ways the community can “work together to encourage intercultural understanding,” Givens said.

Local Armenian groups called for the City Council to nominate a committee to study the May 14 vandalism of the Homenetmen Armenian General Athletics Union and Scouts Building at 544 W. Broadway.

Vandals painted swastikas on the building’s walls and on several vans parked nearby. Police have no suspects.

The vandalism set off a round of insults aimed at Armenians by other residents who claimed Armenian immigrants, who make up about 20% of Glendale’s 195,000 residents, were asking for special treatment from city officials.

The task force will include Pierre Chraghchian, a Homenetmen board member; Mayor Eileen Givens; Mary Hamilton, former Chamber of Commerce president; Susan Hunt, president of the Glendale Council PTA; Chahe Keuroghelian, intercultural relations coordinator for the Glendale Police Department; Harry Kimm, an interpreter with the Stanford International Group, and Karen La Madrid, associate general counsel, Department of Legal Affairs, Southern California Assn. of Seventh-day Adventists.

Also: Angus MacLeod, past president of the Glendale Council on Aging; Rabbi Carole Meyers, head of Temple Sinai of Glendale; Alice Petrossian, director of special projects/intercultural education for the Glendale Unified School District; Frank Quintero, a member of the Arroyo Verdugo Sub-Regional Planning Committee; Glendale City Manager Dave Ramsay; Herman Sillas, an attorney with Ochoa & Sillas, and the Rev. Phil Wood, senior pastor, First United Methodist Church, Glendale.