Week of Violence Prompts ‘Skinhead Alert’ in Denver

After a series of fatal shootings, high-speed chases, running gun battles and death threats involving violent young white supremacists, authorities put the city on what amounted to a “skinhead alert” Thursday.

“In this city we’re not going to tolerate people shooting anyone . . . based upon someone’s color, or someone’s gender, or someone’s sexual orientation, or if they’re wearing a blue uniform,” Denver Mayor Wellington Webb vowed at a news conference. “We’re not going to give up the streets of Denver!”

As police fanned out across a 20-block portion of west Denver in search of a young white male who had fired on an officer Thursday morning, authorities separately launched a cooperative effort with the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to determine whether recent incidents were part of a skinhead uprising or mere coincidence.

The trouble started a week ago when 11-year police veteran Bruce Vander Jagt was shot and killed after a high-speed chase with a skinhead who later committed suicide with the slain officer’s handgun.

On Tuesday, a dead pig was dumped in the parking lot of the slain officer’s station house. Etched on the side of the carcass was Vander Jagt’s name. On its belly, someone had carved the image of a police badge around the word “pig.”

On Tuesday night, Oumar Dia, a 38-year-old West African refugee waiting for a downtown bus, was taunted and then shot and killed by two young white men. A single mother who tried to help Dia was shot in the back and paralyzed.

Nathan Thill, 19, was charged Thursday with first-degree murder in connection with the killing.

Meanwhile, an officer responding to a reported burglary in progress Thursday was fired on by a young white male. The assailant remained at large despite a massive police response.

Authorities were trying to determine whether the burglary had been staged to lure an officer into an ambush.

After first being fired upon, “the officer retreated and took cover behind a wall,” said Police Sgt. Dennis Cribari. “Then the suspect jumped out of the bushes and began firing again at the officer, who returned fire. The suspect escaped.” The officer was not injured.

Earlier, someone scrawled the word “pig” on a gang unit police cruiser. And several police substations have received menacing telephone calls--including a bomb threat at the city jail--placed by anonymous callers who used language peppered with Nazi references.

In an interview, Jefferson County Sheriff Ron Beckham said: “We’ve got a real problem here, no question about it. This is really a street war.”

Tom Sullivan, gang coordinator for the state Department of Correction’s adult parole division, agreed.

“The best thing for law enforcement to do is not bow down to these guys,” he said. “Right now these guys are loving the battle. But once they start having a lot of contacts with police, they’ll back off.”

The so-called neo-Nazi skinhead phenomenon is more a way of life than a structured movement, but its members have been linked to at least 37 murders nationwide, according to a recent Anti-Defamation League survey.

Skinheads first appeared in the United States in the mid-1980s at a time when most racist and anti-Semitic groups, including the Ku Klux Klan and paramilitary neo-Nazi sects, were in decline. Wherever they have surfaced, hate-motivated crimes directed against racial minorities, homosexuals and even other skinheads have invariably followed.

Denver police now are questioning almost anyone with a shaved head.

Dale Larkin, 21, was among about two dozen young men and women who were rousted by plainclothes officers at a downtown plaza popular among teenagers Wednesday night.

“They yanked us around and slapped a cigarette out of my hand,” said Larkin, who has shaved the hair off both sides of his head.

“I understand why police are mad, but why take it out on me? It’s ridiculous to be harassed and cussed at by police just because of prejudgments and stereotypes.”

But Webb said there is more to the ongoing crackdown than that.

“We have to govern the city. We also can’t panic the people in the city,” he said. “We also have to give the Police Department the tools necessary to apprehend people.”