Skinheads Still Visible Presence in Ventura : Hate: Police chart no rise in the activities of white supremacists, but some local leaders say the problem is larger than authorities suspect.

The unprovoked stabbing of a Ventura musician near the city’s landmark pier--an attack police describe as racially motivated--has left some residents stunned and community leaders condemning the crime.

Others, however, say the assault last week on Leonard Boles, an African American member of a local reggae band, came as no surprise.

They say the attack was a reminder of a small but persistent source of racial friction in the city: teen-agers with white supremacist beliefs who occasionally lash out in violence.

“I just said, ‘Here we go again,’ ” said the Rev. John Baylor, pastor of the Olivet Baptist Church. “I’m not surprised by any racist action in this city or county because I know they’re going to happen.”

Although police say they are few in number, skinheads and white supremacists--whether in organized, active gangs or loose-knit groups--have been a visible presence in Ventura since the mid-1980s.

They are known for their shaved heads, swastika tattoos and messages of white power.

The 17-year-old suspect arraigned in the Boles attack was described by police as a white supremacist who attacked the musician because of his race. The youth is charged with assault with a deadly weapon and committing a racially motivated crime.

Despite that attack, authorities in Ventura say there has been no increase in the activities of white supremacists. Those activities range from graffiti to racial slurs and physical assaults. And police say they have no plans to crack down on skinheads.

But some community leaders and students believe such harassment often goes unreported and that the problem is larger than law enforcement officials suspect.

“We need to quit waiting till an incident happens, till somebody gets killed, before we make a fuss,” Baylor said.

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Recent figures on hate crimes, which are tracked by the Ventura County district attorney’s office, were unavailable late last week.

But in 1990, a dozen incidents of violence or vandalism directed at racial and religious minority groups were reported to Ventura County authorities. A report issued the previous year found that skinheads had been linked to at least 10 incidents countywide between 1988 and 1989.

Those incidents included the beating of a teen-age girl with a baseball bat, two stabbings, a firebombing and a cross-burning in Ventura. Skinhead gang members also were charged with twice vandalizing a Ventura synagogue--Temple Beth Torah--with anti-Semitic graffiti.

Rabbi Michael Berk of Temple Beth Torah said the number of white supremacist incidents may have subsided, but the “the baseless and senseless hatred that goes along with it is quite prevalent.”

Other examples of white supremacist activities in Ventura include:

* A 1991 attack on a 17-year-old Ventura High School student who revived a Black Student Union group at the school, prompting other students to attempt to start a white student union. As racial tension on the campus increased, a member of a white supremacist group punched the student in the face and screamed a racial slur at him.

* The arrest in early 1994 of four teen-agers, described as white supremacists, after fights at two Ventura High basketball games. The youths were accused of shouting racial taunts at African American students and threatening to shoot an African American school guard.

Ventura Police Sgt. Carl Handy, who tracks the city’s street gangs, estimated that fewer than 10 racially motivated crimes have occurred in the city during the past two years. But based on conversation with students, he believes the number of youths embracing white supremacy is on the rise.

“The racial lines, unfortunately, are being drawn across all boundaries of our population to some degree,” he said.

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Baylor and some black teen-agers say they feel unsafe walking at night along Ventura’s beachfront and in the Pierpont neighborhood, areas where white gangs have been known to frequent. But police have not linked skinhead activity to specific areas of the city.

“I don’t think it’s a large-scale problem, but then I’m not the guy out there getting stabbed,” Handy said.

At Ventura High School, black students say the racial atmosphere on campus has improved markedly from a year ago when the confrontations at the basketball games occurred. Now, they say, the students who promote white power are more low-key, but the signs are still there.

Last week, senior Eric Blair, 17, sat down in history class and spotted a swastika carefully inked onto the desk next to him. Below it were written the words, “Extreme Hatred.”

“It didn’t make me mad,” said Blair, a member of the varsity football team. “It just made me feel like this person is really stupid.”

In the past, such messages were more blatant.

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As a freshman two years ago, Alexis Sanders said she arrived for school one morning to find the words “Go Back to Africa” and other racial epithets scrawled across her locker.

“I was ready to transfer from this school,” said Sanders, 16, now a junior. “All these white people were getting on my nerves and the administration wouldn’t do anything about it.”

But school administrators eventually moved to defuse the racial tension.

Last spring, Ventura High administrators hired Judith Rubenstein, a Santa Barbara consultant, to teach students and teachers on conflict resolution. Rubenstein also trained a core group of students to act as mediators when racial conflicts arise.

Rubenstein said most of the students identified as skinheads resisted her efforts at counseling. Some of them, she said, wore Hitler T-shirts to class until such clothing was banned.

Joseph Spirito, superintendent of the Ventura Unified School District, said he believes staff members are now more sensitive to racial issues, and quickly discipline students who make racial slurs.

Sanders and other students agree.

“There’s still racism, but things have gotten better,” she said.

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According to Handy, skinhead activity in Ventura peaked during the 1980s. At that time, there was an organized skinhead group, whose members could be identified by their militant-style clothing, shaved heads and steel-toed boots, Handy said.

But the group’s identity began to fade five or six years ago. Several local leaders were sent to jail or prison, while other hard-core members drifted away, Handy said.

Police have identified white supremacists in Ventura but do not consider them a gang. They are more loose-knit, and less aware of the skinheads’ political history, Handy said. They cannot always be pegged by their looks alone, though many still display the look of skinheads.

“One of the things we see . . . are tattoos endemic to white supremacy things--swastikas, iron crosses and SWP,” a prison expression that stands for Supreme White Power, he said.

Others draw less of a distinction between avowed skinheads and youths who claim to promote white pride.

“There is not a lot of difference,” said Cheryl Azair, associate director of the Pacific Southwest Region of the Anti-Defamation League. “They are truly violent and they have no problems committing the most virulent crimes.”

The ADL does not track hate crimes or skinhead activity in Ventura County. But the group has reported a steady increase in nationwide skinhead membership from several hundred youths in 1987 to an estimated 3,500 skinheads in 1993.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Kim Gibbons, who is prosecuting the 17-year-old accused of stabbing Boles, has handled several other cases involving skinhead attacks.

“Usually their victims are white,” Gibbons said. “They get into it with each other.”

Rev. Baylor and others say the activity of white supremacists is not merely a police problem. Incidents, even minor ones, must be reported. And the entire community, he said, must show its opposition to such harassment.

“If you don’t encounter it directly you’ll say, ‘Well, it doesn’t happen,’ ” Baylor said.

“If the police, clergy, law enforcement, the school--if all those people came together in a mass demonstration and said this is unacceptable, I’m just wondering what would happen.”