Not Guilty Pleas in Fake Bomb Case
Two alleged white supremacists from the San Fernando Valley pleaded not guilty Monday to charges that they planted 10 fake bombs around Los Angeles in an attempt to scare minority business owners and rid neighborhoods of nonwhites.
After entering the plea in Los Angeles County Municipal Court, Jeffrey Allen Campbell, 36, and Justin Bertone, 19, were ordered held on $2.5 million bail each.
Bertone’s court-appointed lawyer, Deputy Alternate Public Defender Lee Rosen, told the judge he would request that Bertone undergo a psychiatric exam.
Los Angeles police, with the assistance of the FBI and agents of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms, arrested Campbell and Bertone at Campbell’s home on Hollywood Way in Burbank.
The two men, who police said are associates of a white supremacist gang calling itself White Criminals on Dope, are charged with making terrorist threats in connection with the planting of the fake bombs. Investigators said Campbell and Bertone had previously threatened some of their alleged targets by telephone, and in one such call said their goal was to rid the Sunland-Tujunga area of nonwhites.
Carla Arranaga, the deputy district attorney in charge of prosecuting hate crimes, said Campbell and Bertone carried out a “campaign of terror.”
“The evidence suggests that these are men who harbored white supremacist beliefs and acted out” those beliefs, Arranaga said outside the courtroom.
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