A Call to Fight Hate

Buford O. Furrow Jr., whose Aug. 10, 1999, shooting rampage in the San Fernando Valley left one dead and five wounded, believed, according to court testimony, that he had “succeeded in making the statement he wished to make.” How wrong he was.

This pathetic, cowardly man, as James V. DeSarno Jr., head of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, so aptly described him, last week pleaded guilty to killing Filipino American mail carrier Joseph S. Ileto and seriously wounding four children and an adult at the North Valley Jewish Community Center. In exchange for his plea, he received a mandatory life prison term with no possibility of parole, appeal or pardon.

Federal prosecutors dropped plans to seek the death penalty because of Justice Department protocols requiring them to weigh mitigating factors, such as mental illness. Government psychiatrists reviewed more than 2,000 pages of medical records documenting Furrow’s efforts over a decade to get treatment for homicidal urges, urges that found satisfaction in the warped ideology of white supremacist organizations.

After Furrow surrendered, he told FBI agents that he shot Ileto nine times because the postal worker “looked Asian or Latino” and that he fired 70 rounds into the community center as a “wake-up call for Americans to kill Jews.”

It was a wake-up call all right, but not the one Furrow intended. It was a wake-up call to fight the hate that fuels such rampages, to change laws that allow guns to get into such hands, to campaign for assertive community treatment for people with severe psychiatric disorders.

With uncommon courage, the Ileto family and the families of the wounded children have become ambassadors against hate. They have spoken out at public meetings, marches and rallies across the country. Their actions have led to the formation of a Valley hate crimes alliance, a new statewide commission to coordinate human relations work and the Million Mom March on Washington, D.C., for “common-sense” gun control laws.

The battle continues, in homes, on streets, in courtrooms. Some of the victories are especially sweet. In September, the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center won a multimillion-dollar civil judgment against Aryan Nations, the white racist group to which Furrow and so many other social misfits belonged, effectively shutting it down. For now.

For the families of the victims, who had been informed of the plea bargain in advance, Furrow’s guilty plea and sentencing averts a lengthy, painful trial. It allows them, not to forget--never to forget--but to look to the future and to concentrate on countering the message of hate.

Their courage is a call for the rest of us to join them.