2 Glendale Men Face Hate Crime Charges

Two brothers were charged Wednesday with waging a campaign of harassment and intimidation against African Americans, Latinos, Armenians and interracial families in a predominantly white neighborhood of Glendale.

A federal hate crime indictment accuses Philip Martin Alexander, 21, and his brother, Steven Eugene Alexander, 19, of cruising through the streets of their neighborhood last summer, shouting racial epithets, flashing skinhead gang signs and threatening harm to minorities they encountered.

In May, the indictment said, the brothers confronted Susan Shumate, a white woman, while she was walking with her biracial children near her home in the La Crescenta section of Glendale.

“You’re in our neighborhood, get out! . . . Your kind doesn’t belong here!” they reportedly shouted amid a torrent of abusive racial remarks, according to the indictment.

When Shumate started to write down the license plate number of the brothers’ car, Steven Alexander allegedly warned that her son would be “dead.”

About a month later, Shumate and her boyfriend, Mark Slider, who is black, were out for an evening drive when she saw the Alexanders with several other young men talking at a curbside on Boston Street.

“She told her boyfriend these were the same guys from the other incident, and he ended up stopping the car and asking these guys why they did it,” according to Glendale police spokesman Chahe Keuroghelian.

“Pretty soon, he realized he was outnumbered by the four or five guys there, and he got back into his car,” Keuroghelian said. “But as he was about to leave, Philip Alexander reached in and grabbed his coat, ripping it.

“Steven, meanwhile, was on the hood of the car, jumping up and down and kicking in the windshield. He was yelling, ‘White power!’ the whole time and both brothers were screaming racial slurs.”

As the couple sped away, Steven Alexander fell from the car’s hood, breaking his arm.

Shumate and Slider called 911 to report the attack, but not before Steven Alexander telephoned Glendale police to say he had been the victim of a hit-and-run.

The two brothers were arrested by Glendale police June 8 on charges of violating the couple’s civil rights. Those charges are pending. Assistant U.S. Atty. Michael Gennaco said Wednesday that the federal charges probably will be given precedence.

The Alexanders are each charged with conspiring to deprive the Shumates and Slider of their civil rights, a felony, and with two counts of trying to force them out of the neighborhood, both misdemeanors.

If convicted, they could be imprisoned for up to 12 years.

Philip Alexander was arrested by FBI agents Wednesday morning without incident. His brother, Steven, has been in Los Angeles County Jail awaiting transfer to state prison after a recent burglary conviction, Gennaco said.