Community at Odds Over Youth Terrorism

As swarms of sheriff’s deputies led away half a dozen teens in a quiet Santa Clarita Valley neighborhood earlier this month, some residents stood by and applauded.

For more than a year, prosecutors said, a group of marauding youths terrorized the area. Dressed as “skinheads,” the thugs burglarized hundreds of cars, set off dozens of small explosives and firebombs, vandalized parks and a community center, and committed one assault motivated by racial bias, the prosecutors alleged.

Three juveniles, who police declined to name, have been charged, along with David Eugene Lampman, 18, of Canyon Country, who pleaded not guilty to possessing and igniting an incendiary device. He is being held in lieu of $1-million bail. Detectives said at least 10 others are suspects in an ongoing investigation.

And the case gets more and more unusual.

Local politicians who regularly boast that Santa Clarita is the fourth-safest city in the U.S. have ignored the incidents, and interviews show neighborhood residents don’t agree on how serious the threats of violence were or continue to be. Many people purportedly targeted by the attackers have refused to come forward.

Olivia Rosales, a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney, the hate-crimes prosecutor whose charges were the basis for the arrests May 16, said she finds it strange that so few victims are willing to cooperate.

The local police commander, Capt. Donald A. Rodriguez, doesn’t.

He said he has seen no evidence that the problem described so vividly by prosecutors, in fact, exists.

The Canyon Country neighborhood is modest and racially integrated. It has a high population of law enforcement officers, firefighters and other active or retired public servants.

With street names seemingly plucked from a Monet garden, the area is known as Flowerpark. Modest homes, built largely during the 1980s, range from apartment and condominium clusters to townhouses and two-story homes along curving streets. There are lawns tended by community gardeners, parks, pools and tennis courts.

An apartment manager said a group of teen renters had caused problems, including late-night parties and illegal fires, until they were ousted several months ago.

No resident was willing to be identified, but many told of car break-ins, smashed mailboxes and rowdy teens prowling the streets. Several said some neighbors fled, including minorities who told of feeling threatened. None could be found.

“I get along fine with the people around me,” one grandmother said. “But I have no tolerance for that kind,” she said, nodding toward a nearby home where she contended that several young gang members lived.

Others in the neighborhood deny knowing of any problems.

Investigators said they believe the reports filed amount to only a small fraction of the incidents.

Det. Ed Nordskog of the Los Angeles County sheriff’s arson/explosives unit, who is credited with leading the six-month investigation, said the inquiry began with the pipe bombing of a mailbox last Halloween.

Nordskog said he is investigating three bombings of mailboxes and 22 other incidents involving explosives, and instances of intimidation and vandalism throughout the neighborhood. He said that residents complained of many incidents never before reported, including an attack on a black 16-year-old boy last year. Authorities said the victim was not seriously injured.

“It was staggering the amount of [sheriff’s dispatch] radio calls that they generated,” Nordskog said. “Deputies went there numerous times.”

Several of the juveniles arrested admitted to daily drug use and to burglarizing as many as 800 cars, stealing whatever they could to support their habits, Nordskog said.

“These kids are messed up,” Nordskog said.

Detectives and prosecutors have declined to release crime reports or victims’ names, citing the ongoing investigation.

“We don’t want to scare potential witnesses,” said Sgt. Kathy Voyer, a member of a sheriff’s countywide hate-crime task force organized in the fall. “[Suspect] families are still there. There is an ongoing intimidation factor. We want to be sensitive to their [victims’] concerns.”

Rosales, the prosecutor, said some victims are very reluctant to file complaints. “Retracing the crimes is a very difficult part, just trying to piece things together and follow up. There is very little ongoing documentation, no original investigation” following the initial reports taken by deputies, she said.

“I would think most people would be more than willing to make reports,” she said. “I find it strange that everybody is so skittish.”

Rodriguez said he has no evidence that the allegations are accurate. He pointed out that computer mapping of crime reports failed to detect anything unusual.

Statistics compiled for The Times show that larceny reports, including vehicle burglaries and thefts, jumped by 900% in the first few months this year. Yet those numbers are small, increasing from five reports filed from January through May 24 last year to 50 in the same period this year.

Rodriguez said the numbers follow a citywide trend in which thefts, largely car burglaries in January and February, rose 17%, from 793 to 928 in the same periods in the last two years. He said his department issued public warnings and more than 20 arrests have been made, unrelated to the separate teen investigation.

But Rodriguez said his own deputies had no warnings of the raids pending in their own backyard. “We weren’t aware of anything beforehand,” he said.

The charges have shocked and surprised many outside the immediate neighborhood.

“Obviously, we don’t like to see anything like this happen in Santa Clarita or anywhere,” said Dianna Boone, the city community services supervisor who serves as staff liaison to the city’s Human Relations Forum.