Showing posts with label hate crimes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hate crimes. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Obama's Candidacy Angers, Excites Hate Groups

by Dina Temple-Raston
All Things Considered
National Public Radio NPR
October 28, 2008

The charges Monday against two neo-Nazi skinheads accused of plotting to kill Barack Obama drew attention to law enforcement's simmering concerns over how white supremacists are reacting to the possibility of a black president.

The alleged plan that Daniel Cowart of Bells, Tenn., and Paul Schlesselman, of West Helena, Ark., were hatching was fantastic in its scope. Federal agents said Cowart and Schlesselman planned to rob a gun store, target students at a largely black high school and then try to kill Obama.

The two men did not expect to be successful, but they wanted to die trying, investigators said. They said the two planned to drive as fast as they could toward Obama and shoot at him from the windows of their car. They allegedly had discussed wearing white tuxedos and top hats for the occasion. The suspects are being held without bond on charges of possessing an unregistered firearm, conspiring to steal firearms and threatening a presidential candidate.

This is the second white supremacist plot against Obama that authorities have revealed. In August, just days before Obama accepted the Democratic nomination in Denver, police arrested three men with white supremacist ties for possibly threatening him.

While law enforcement officials say Obama was never in any danger in either situation, they are also quick to say that they cannot afford to take these cases lightly. And they have been expecting new challenges from white supremacist groups.

"There is a probable hypothesis that in the event that Obama becomes president that you could have a galvanization of these white supremacist groups," said John Karl, the officer in charge of the Los Angeles Police Department's criminal conspiracy unit. "Obviously, law enforcement needs to be prepared, and how do you prepare? You need to become as resourceful and comprehensively understand the groups and individuals involved."

Karl says the First Amendment ties law enforcement's hands. Officers cannot move in until and unless these groups actually commit a crime.

"If no crime has been committed, no activity has come up on the radar screen, we can't arbitrarily start rounding people up," he said. "There is a little problem with the Constitution and things like that."

Supremacist Groups In California

Travel out of metropolitan Los Angeles — to Southern California cities farther inland where supremacists have traditionally congregated — and it is clear that law enforcement is in a state of alert.

Chris Keeling is part of the FBI's hate crimes task force in Santa Clarita. As he sees it, Obama's effect on the hate movement is no longer theoretical; it has already happened.

"There is more on the Internet. There are more flyers, leafletting going out, because now they have a target," he said. "Take Obama out of the situation, you're still going to have leafletting. But having Obama in there and being a stone's throw from being the president, has it increased the Internet activity? Absolutely, absolutely."

These days, Keeling works about six hate crime calls a week. Some of them are serious. A couple of months ago, skinheads beat up a customer at a restaurant because he was black. Others are crimes of opportunity. Obama posters, for example, have become an easy target for vandals to deface.

The FBI set up a task force in Santa Clarita partly because racist skinhead gangs have long been a fixture there. For years, the Antelope Valley had been a white enclave — a refuge from Los Angeles. When immigrants began moving in, hate groups saw their membership ranks grow as whites in the neighborhoods banded together. Keeling said Obama's candidacy is adding fear and uncertainty to an already volatile mix.

"This is different. This is new. This has never happened before," Keeling said of Obama's candidacy. "We're not doing anything extra, but we're kind of being more cognizant of things."

Candidacy Fits Into Ideology

Part of the problem is that Obama is playing into the neo-Nazi and white supremacist narrative, said Brian Levin, who studies hate and extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.

What the groups were saying — "Jews and blacks coming out of the urban areas are going to take over this white nation of ours" — has occurred, he said.

You only have to look to the Internet to see how white supremacist leaders such as David Duke are using Obama to rally their troops. Duke has called Obama a "visual aid for hate groups."

He says an Obama presidency would provide indisputable proof that whites have lost control of America.

"This is a cultural and racial battlefront," said Levin. "Barack Obama is symbol No. 1 of the worst the future has to offer."

While Obama may be an easy focus of discussion for haters, he hasn't unified them. In fact, in many ways, he has managed to divide the movement.

Catalyst For A Race War

Tim Zaal, a former white supremacist from Los Angeles, says the split Obama has created is almost generational — between old-school Ku Klux Klan types who are viscerally against a black man running for president and a new wave of haters.

"You have the more — kind-of strange to say it — progressive white attitude: The worse it gets, the better," said Zaal.

Zaal says the new generation is particularly focused on what they see as the coming race war. They have been trying to spark one for years. Some think, even hope, that an Obama presidency will do just that.

Zaal says some will actually vote for Obama to send the country into a tailspin. "The faster this country falls, the sooner white revolution will arise," he said.

That mindset is all over the neo-Nazi Web sites. On one, a man with the pen name "LastOfMyKind" wrote, "Could it be that the nomination of Obama finally sparks a sense of unity in white voters? I would propose that this threat of black rule may very well be the thing that finally scares some sense back into complacent whites."

This is what worries the police and the FBI.

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Gay Teen's Killing Labeled a Hate Crime

Gay Teen's Killing Labeled a Hate Crime

By REBECCA CATHCART
The New York Times
2008-02-23
OXNARD, Calif.

Hundreds of mourners gathered at a church here on Friday to remember an eighth-grade boy who was shot to death inside a junior high school computer lab by a fellow student in what prosecutors are calling a hate crime.

In recent weeks, the victim, Lawrence King, 15, had said publicly that he was gay, classmates said, enduring harassment from a group of schoolmates, including the 14-year-old boy charged in his death.

“God knit Larry together and made him wonderfully complex,” the Rev. Dan Birchfield of Westminster Presbyterian Church told the crowd as he stood in front of a large photograph of the victim. “Larry was a masterpiece.”

The shooting stunned residents of Oxnard, a laid-back middle-class beach community just north of Malibu. It also drew a strong reaction from gay and civil rights groups.

“We’ve never had school violence like this here before, never had a school shooting,” said David Keith, a spokesman for the Oxnard Police Department.

Les Winget, 44, whose daughter Nikki, 13, attends the school, called the crime “absolutely unbelievable.”

Jay Smith, executive director of the Ventura County Rainbow Alliance, where Lawrence took part in Friday night group activities for gay teenagers, said, “We’re all shocked that this would happen here.”

The gunman, identified by the police as Brandon McInerney, “is just as much a victim as Lawrence,” said Masen Davis, executive director of the Transgender Law Center. “He’s a victim of homophobia and hate.”

The law center is working with Equality California and the Gay-Straight Alliance to push for a legislative review of anti-bias policies and outreach efforts in California schools. According to the 2005 California Healthy Kids Survey, junior high school students in the state are 3 percent more likely to be harassed in school because of sexual orientation or gender identity than those in high school.


'He Was Always Smiling'


King's Friend Comments to MTV.com
That finding is representative of schools across the country, said Stephen Russell, a University of Arizona professor who studies the issues facing lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual youth.

Mr. Davis said “more and more kids are coming out in junior high school and expressing gender different identities at younger ages.”

“Unfortunately,” he added, “society has not matured at the same rate.”

Prosecutors charged Brandon as an adult with murder as a premeditated hate crime and gun possession. If convicted, he faces a sentence of 52 years to life in prison.

A senior deputy district attorney, Maeve Fox, would not say why the authorities added the hate crime to the murder charge.

In interviews, classmates of the two boys at E. O. Green Junior High School said Lawrence had started wearing mascara, lipstick and jewelry to school, prompting a group of male students to bully him.

“They teased him because he was different,” said Marissa Moreno, 13, also in the eighth grade. “But he wasn’t afraid to show himself.”

Lawrence wore his favorite high-heeled boots most days, riding the bus to school from Casa Pacifica, a center for abused and neglected children in the foster care system, where he began living last fall. Officials would not say anything about his family background other than that his parents, Greg and Dawn King, were living and that he had four siblings. Lawrence started attending E. O. Green last winter, said Steven Elson, the center’s chief executive. “He had made connections here,” Dr. Elson said. “It’s just a huge trauma here. It’s emotionally very charged.”

Since the shooting, hundreds of people have sent messages to a memorial Web site where photographs show Lawrence as a child with a gap in his front teeth, and older, holding a caterpillar in the palm of his hand.

“He had a character that was bubbly,” Marissa said. “We would just laugh together. He would smile, then I would smile and then we couldn’t stop.”

On the morning of Feb. 12, Lawrence was in the school’s computer lab with 24 other students, said Mr. Keith, the police spokesman. Brandon walked into the room with a gun and shot Lawrence in the head, the police said, then ran from the building. Police officers caught him a few blocks away.

Unconscious when he arrived at the hospital, Lawrence was declared brain dead the next day but kept on a ventilator to preserve his organs for donation, said the Ventura County medical examiner, Armando Chavez. He was taken off life support on Feb. 14.

Brandon is being held at a juvenile facility in Ventura on $770,000 bail, said his lawyer, Brian Vogel. He will enter a plea on March 21.

At a vigil for Lawrence last week in Ventura, 200 people carried glow sticks and candles in paper cups as they walked down a boardwalk at the beach and stood under the stars. Melissa Castillo, 13, recalled the last time she had seen Lawrence. “He was walking through the lunch room, wearing these awesome boots,” she said. “I ran over to him and said, ‘Your boots are so cute!’ He was like, ‘Yeah, I know.’ ”

She raised her chin and arched an eyebrow in imitation. “ ‘If you want cute boots,’ ” Lawrence had told her, “ ‘you have to buy the expensive kind.’ ” His boots had cost $30.

“So, for Lawrence,” Melissa said to five girls holding pink and green glow sticks, “we have to go get the expensive kind.”

http://news.aol.com/story/_a/boys-killing-labeled-a-hate-crime/20080223141909990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Hate crimes in San Diego

Hate Crime Spikes, According to Latest Figures
By WILL CARLESS Voice Staff Writer
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BLINKLISTMonday, Jan. 21, 2008 | The number of hate crime offenses reported in San Diego County increased by 23 percent from 2005 to 2006, according to figures from the California Attorney General's Office, which tallies hate crime statistics in the state.


AUDIO: Talking Hate Crime
The statistics, the most recent figures available, also showed that the number of hate crime offenses reported against Hispanics in San Diego County tripled from 2005 to 2006, and that more hate crimes were reported against Hispanics in 2006 than in any of the last five years. In California, the number of hate crimes committed against Hispanics also jumped 16 percent from 2005 to 2006.


The statistics have led some local experts on hate crime to conclude that San Diego crime surge could be tied to an increasingly intense immigration debate raging in the region. The immigration debate, which reignited with a force in early 2006, could have increased both the number of crimes being committed and the awareness of hate crime issues for citizens and law enforcement officers alike.

"When you read some of the terms that are being used by otherwise legitimate spokespeople which categorize undocumented individuals as vermin, the bringers of disease, pedophiles, thieves, it dehumanizes them," said Morris Casuto, regional director of the San Diego Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit group that promotes civil rights.

"The increase in hate crimes against Latino and Hispanic community suggests that this type of dehumanization is having an impact on other people that are prepared to take the law into their own hands," Casuto added.

Hate crimes are distinguishable from other property or violent crimes because they are motivated by bias against a certain social group. Most hate crimes in San Diego are committed on the basis of a victim's ethnicity or race.


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Oscar Garcia, a deputy district attorney with the county's Special Operations Division, said that to be classified as a hate crime, the act has to be motivated by the bias itself. Hate crimes are offenses that strike fear into a certain segment of the community, he said, and prosecutors can potentially double an offender's sentence if they can prove hate of a certain group is the nexus for the crime.

Hate crime had been dipping in San Diego County for the early part of the decade. From 2002 to 2004, the total number of hate crimes reported fell almost 50 percent -- from 214 to 138 -- before staying almost level between 2004 and 2005. In 2006, the number increased to 181, still lower than 2002.

And hate crimes reported against Hispanics had remained fairly level between 2002 and 2004. Offences reported against Hispanics dropped sharply in 2005 before rising to a level far higher than any of the previous four years in 2006.

But because the overall number of hate crimes reported is relatively low, experts pointed out that any trends must be analyzed with caution. Overall, the 23 percent rise in hate crimes reported from 2005 to 2006 represented an increase of 42 crimes in a county with a population of almost 3 million.

Andrew Black, supervisory special agent in charge of the San Diego FBI Civil Rights Program, which aids local law enforcement in fighting hate crime, said the increasingly heated and public debate between anti-illegal immigration groups and immigrant rights activists could be one factor that's contributed to the crime spike from 2005 to 2006.

But Black said the increase could also partly be due to increased awareness of law enforcement officers to the existence of hate crime legislation. Outreach by local law enforcement agencies and effective training of officers in the use of hate crime laws means crimes that years ago wouldn't have been classified as hate-driven are now properly identified for what they are.

Timothy Cabal would disagree.

Cabal is currently incarcerated in the George Bailey Detention Facility in Otay Mesa. He recently pleaded guilty to two separate hate crimes that occurred about a year apart. Both involved altercations at bars in East County and both involved Cabal allegedly attacking victims and sending them to the hospital.

One of the victims was black, another, prosecutors argued, was attacked because Cabal thought the victim was gay.

Cabal, who will be sentenced to 17 years in prison, said his case was wrongly classified as a hate crime. Though prosecutors found a money clip at his home that bore an embossed image of a Ku Klux Klan figure and Cabal sports a tattoo of an iron cross, a symbol that is sometimes associated with the neo-Nazi movement, Cabal maintained his innocence during an interview at the jail.

"I'm not a racist. I have black friends. I'm an honest, church-going man and I didn't mean that to happen to that guy," Cabal said.

But the Cabal case has been held up by the County District Attorney's Office as an example of another dangerous trend in hate crimes within San Diego. Extremist white supremacist groups in East County have become increasingly violent in recent years, said Garcia of the District Attorney's Office.

"California is the center of the neo-Nazi movement in the United States and Southern California is the hotbed of that movement," Garcia said.

And as the immigration debate continues to boil, the number of hate crimes reported in the county is likely to continue to climb, said Stuart Henry, a professor of criminal justice and director of the School of Public Affairs at San Diego State University.

Whether that increase in reported crimes is because of a true rise in the number of crimes committed or is the result of heightened sensitivity of the latest politically charged issue -- in this case immigration -- is anyone's guess, Henry said.

With the immigration debate high on everyone in law enforcement's radar, there's a greater likelihood not only that more cases of racial bias arise, but also that more cases are identified as hate crimes, Henry said.

"Are they real hate crimes, or are they just seen as hate crimes because of the ongoing immigration debate?" Henry said. "I think there's got to be some degree of amplification just because this debate exists."

http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2008/01/21/news/01hatecrime012108.txt