U.S. Widens Role in Probe of Hate Crimes in Antelope Valley

The federal government is stepping up investigations of hate crimes in the Antelope Valley in response to concerns that the number of reported incidents there is increasing and their violence is escalating, officials said last week.

Over the last 18 months, the FBI has assigned at least four agents to the desert area and, in an unusual collaboration, the U.S. attorney’s office is working on a regular basis with county prosecutors--exchanging files and plotting courtroom strategy, authorities said.

Friday’s arrest of a 23-year-old self-proclaimed skinhead in Lancaster in connection with two separate attacks on African Americans last year is the latest example of law-enforcement’s concentrated effort.

Thirteen Antelope Valley residents have been prosecuted for either hate crimes or civil-rights violations since 1993, when a cross burning in Palmdale began a string of racially motivated incidents, according to FBI supervisor Gary Auer.

“There are cases getting prosecuted that wouldn’t have been before,” Auer said, crediting the joint efforts of his agents, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, and the U.S. attorney’s office.

“It used to be that federal investigators worked with federal prosecutors and local investigators worked with local prosecutors, and a great deal of important information was never exchanged.”

Lancaster Mayor Frank Roberts and county sheriff’s deputies maintain that the Antelope Valley has no more hate crimes than other areas.

“Look at the San Fernando Valley and we really don’t have anything like what they’re experiencing,” Roberts said. “We want to be realistic and not stick our heads in the sand. If there is a problem, we want to shut it down, but we just aren’t getting very many hate-crime reports.”

But federal authorities disagree, saying they are concerned that white supremacists are trying to frighten minorities away from the area’s working-class suburbs.

The percentage of African Americans in Lancaster, for example, more than doubled between 1980 and 1990, from 3.3% to 7.2%, according to U.S. census figures, while the number of Latinos there rose from 7.2% to 15.2%.

Palmdale’s population, meanwhile, included 3.3% African Americans in 1980 but 6.1% in 1990, and its Latino residents nearly tripled from 9.3% in 1980 to 27% in 1990.

Auer said he and other law-enforcement authorities consider the January 1993 cross burning a milestone because it was the first in a series of harassment complaints involving skinhead groups.

Two juveniles were arrested for the incident at the Palmdale home owned of a mixed-race couple, in which a wooden cross was set afire on the family’s front lawn, Auer said. Cross burnings are a violation of federal and state civil-rights statutes. The FBI investigated, eventually turning over its findings to the district attorney’s office for prosecution.

The two teenagers, both members of a local white-supremacist gang, were convicted in November 1993. Each was sentenced to a week in a juvenile detention center, six-months’ probation and 80 hours of court-ordered community service.

In February 1995, three members of the skinhead gang “Nazi Lowriders” fired six shots at four African Americans, including a 1-year-old baby, who were sitting in a car outside Antelope Valley High School.

The three skinheads were convicted of attempted murder and use of a firearm. They received extra long prison sentences under the state’s 1987 Hate-Crime Enhancement Law. The three convicted men, all from the Antelope Valley, received prison sentences of 12, 18 and 20 years.

Three months after the drive-by shooting, in May 1995, a woman suffered a separated shoulder after she was beaten by four skinheads, who authorities say were trying to terrorize her and her husband into leaving the Palmdale mobile home park where they lived.

The four juveniles were convicted and sentenced to six-months’ probation and 225 hours of community service.

In one of the most high-profile attacks, an African American teenager was beaten and stabbed by three skinheads while walking to class at Antelope Valley High School on Dec. 8, 1995.

The three accused youths pleaded guilty to assault, use of a deadly weapon and violation of civil rights. They received sentences of eight and 10 years in state prison.

Danny Edward Williams, who was arrested Friday after he escaped from a minimum-security facility Jan. 18, will stand trial in March on charges that he and two juveniles allegedly beat and stabbed a 16-year-old African American last July on a Lancaster street.

Williams is also accused in a second beating, this one on April 28, in which the African American victim was struck with a baseball bat.

Auer said FBI agents believe there are three white-supremacist gangs operating separately in the Antelope Valley--the Nazi Lowriders, the Palmdale Peckerwoods and the Metal Minds--and that their activities are not coordinated. The only common thread, he and other authorities said, is their targeting of minorities.

“Most of these cases are random, unprovoked acts of violence against individuals who happened to be a different color than the perpetrators,” said Carla Arranaga, the deputy district attorney in charge of hate crimes.

Arranaga’s federal counterpart, Assistant U.S. Atty. Michael Gennaco, is one of his office’s heaviest hitters, a Washington, D.C. transplant whose cases include the prosecution of eight people who were found guilty last year of forcing more than 60 Thai nationals to work as slaves in an El Monte sweatshop.

If a case doesn’t fill the federal criteria for civil rights violations, or if the case involves juveniles, it is usually turned over to Arranaga. She has more flexibility because of California’s hate-crime laws and and much greater freedom in prosecuting juveniles as adults, Gennaco said.

“We want the message to get out that any minor who commits a hate crime could be charged as an adult and sentenced to long terms in a state prison,” said Arranaga, who has successfully prosecuted six individuals for hate crimes in the Antelope Valley since 1995. Arranaga said there are several new cases currently under investigation, but declined to provide detail.

The U.S. attorney’s office only gets involved in a hate-crime investigation if a federally protected activity is involved. If an individual prevents someone from walking the streets or playing in a public park because of race, it is a violation of that person’s civil rights and can be tried in a federal court. Williams, for example, is facing federal charges in connection with the two attacks on black men who were walking down the street and coming out of a video store when they were attacked.

“Our view is that when these cases are tried federally, they are a greater deterrent,” U.S. Atty. Nora Manella said.

“I used to think that we had become a more progressive society,” she continued. “But I’ve learned that there are places where bigotry and racism thrive.”