Recently in hate Category

From Sandi Gibbons at the Los Angeles County DAs office:

LOS ANGELES - A Bakersfield man convicted of stabbing and wounding an Asian man last year during what a jury determined was a hate crime attack was sent to prison today for 22 years.

Aaron Mark Duggan, 28, was sentenced by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Charlaine Olmedo on the basis of a guilty verdict returned by a jury on June 1. Besides finding that it was a hate crime, the jury also determined the victim suffered great bodily injury and that the defendant personally used a knife.

The attack occurred on April 22, 2008, on the track of a junior high school in San Dimas. The victim, Yoo Sun, then 22, was stabbed in the back and ear. A companion who was walking with Sun was attacked, but although bruised, suffered no stab wounds.

Duggan was arrested shortly after the attack and held on a probation violation stemming from an assault conviction in San Luis Obispo County in September 2004. He was charged with the San Dimas attack on March 13, 2008, He has remained in custody on $1.12 million bond.

The defendant was charged with attempted murder. After a trial, the jury found him guilty of the lesser charge of attempted voluntary manslaughter.

The case was prosecuted by Deputy District Attorney George Castello of the Hate Crimes Section.

"We want a public campaign to ostracize those small groups of people that would try to draw a wedge between black and brown in this city," said Leon Jenkins, NAACP president.
Jenkins, along with other local African-American leaders, is reaching out to Latino leaders with an invitation for both communities to work together to end "brown on black" and "black on brown" attacks.

"We're opening up a dialogue with our Hispanic brothers and sisters," said Jenkins. "Secondly, we will file a formal complaint with the FBI, and we will put the city of L.A., the district attorney's office, and the county sheriff's office, that we want vigorous re-enforcement and enforcement of the law against all hate crimes."

Leaders in both communities don't want to focus on the tension between the groups, saying there many more blacks and Latinos who get along than those who don't, but in a recent FBI raid, 147 gang members from a notorious Latino gang were arrested in Hawaiian Gardens. Among the allegations against them, was that they specifically targeted blacks.

While local public officials continue to deny the existence of brown on black hate crime, the FBI cracked down on a Hawaiian Gardens gang responsible for several heinous crimes.

From the Associated Press:

Federal and local agencies were conducting a series of arrests targeting members and associates of the Varrio Hawaiian Gardens street gang, U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman Thom Mrozek said.

A series of federal racketeering indictments was due to be unsealed later Thursday, detailing firearms, narcotics and other charges related to the attacks, Mrozek said.

Further details were not released, but Mrozek said the indictments would detail the attacks on several black victims.

The indictments mark at least the second time in less than two years that federal authorities have alleged that Latino gang members attacked black residents because of their race. Local officials have tried to downplay any racial tensions.

The county's report on hate crimes, which was released Thursday indicated a 28-percent rise in such incidents. This excerpt from our story gives some local flavor to the report:

The report said there were 94 hate crimes reported in the San Gabriel Valley and another 45 reported in the East Los Angeles area, which includes Montebello, Pico Rivera, La Mirada, Whittier and La Habra.

The spike, which comes as the Sheriff's Department and Los Angeles Police Department reported a 5 percent to 6percent reduction in overall crime, was driven by several factors, including gang rivalries and tensions between African Americans and Latinos, officials said.

The report specifically addressed a series of attacks on Latinos by suspected black gang members in Pasadena beginning in 2006. By August of last year, 69 incidents had been investigated, according to the report.

"We talked about the Pasadena situation - `Sock on Mexicans' - in detail there," said Robin Toma, executive director of the commission. "That was a notable challenge."

Toma also referred to recent gang violence that took the lives of 63-year-old Sanders Rollins, 16-year-old Sammantha Salas and 19-year-old Brandon Lee earlier this year.

Then there's this from the LA Noir blog:

Organizers of a group called Enough is Enough plan a press conference in Monrovia this afternoon to decry a recent drive-by shooting there and possibly ask the city to remove Roger Johnson as Chief of Police.

Victim Brandon Black, 23,  has been branded by city officials as a member of the Du Roc Crips -- one of three warring gangs in the Monrovia-Duarte area. His family  said Black is not a gang member and was targeted by members of the Monrovia Nuevo Varrio gang because of his race. Black is Black.

The planned press conference will take place in the 500 block of Royal Oak. It begins at 3 p.m.

Spokesman Henry Clark said the group will demand police term the recent shooting a "hate crime."

"They are going to have to realize there's a ghetto in Monrovia and they are going to have to deal with the problems of the ghetto," Clark said. "Call these crimes what they are."

Clark also referred to Nathan McIntire's recent article on the strife in Monrovia and questioned how effective the police department can be against area gangs when allegations surrounding Police Sgt. Dan Verna have not been thoroughly investigated.

"If the city is not going to pay these officers and if they are going to be sitting in a park doing homosexual stuff with gang members the city needs to turn over patrols to the Sheriff's Department. And turn it over as soon as possible.

"As soon as the CHP and Sheriff's went away, this stuff started cropping up again. people are afraid its going to escalate like before."

BTW a Crime Scene poll on Johnson's performance has yeilded a huge vote of no confidence in the chief. Fully 76 percent of respondents voted in favor of removing Johnson. About 60 percent of those same respondents favor replacing the PD with the Sheriff's Department.

I got this letter from someone who identified himself as a relative of the man who was shot Sunday near Royal Oaks and Shamrock in Monrovia. The relative makes some interesting points about policing in Monrovia and the overall investigation. I've removed any identifying information. Letter on the jump:

The From Noise to Voice blog of an Arcadia resident reports a frightening find on the street outside his home:

This morning, I found our mailbox in pieces, laying on the ground, ran over by a car during the night. My house is next to a high traffic intersection. It's not a strange thing a car jumped the curb and ran up to the sidewalk. It has happened before...

As I was picking up the pieces, I found a note stuffed inside the mailbox...How nice, I thought to myself, the guy is nice enough to leave me his/her contact information...

Boy, was I wrong! I found the scribble be...

"JAPS GO HOME"

My message to the person who did this...

First of all, I am an American! A Chinese American, proud to be!!! Go home? Home is here!!! If you don't like it, YOU GO HOME!!! You are a coward! You did this hiding in the dark of the night...

Here's the rest of the entry

When former candidate for mayor, Aaron Proctor, (whose site is linked
to on this blog) posted this defamatory post about me - which included
ugly graphic sexual slander - the Pasadena blogging community was
completely silent.

http://www.proctorformayor.com/2008/05/22/step-by-step-heart-to-heart-left-right-left-we-all-fall-down/

I think we have lost the ability to see "hate". I mean, if this post
isn't hate, what is? Does the right to "Free Speech" cover...this?
No, I do not think it does.

The weird thing was, what made Proctor so angry was my writing about my
research on Rene Amy. I hadn't even mentioned Proctor, yet he reacted
to it like he himself had been "stung".

Why?

This from the Daily Bulletin:

SAN DIMAS - An Asian man was stabbed in the face and torso during a hate crime attack at Lone Hill Middle School on Tuesday evening.

Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies said the attackers - a 15-year-old boy and a man in his 20s - shouted racial epithets while stabbing the man. "They were shouting out 'White power' or something like that," said sheriff's Lt. Roxanne Hart.

A white man who was walking with the victim at the school at 700 South Lone Hill Avenue about 8:30 p.m. received cuts and bruises from being punched by the pair, Hart said.

Paramedics flew the Asian man to Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center where he was listed in critical condition.

Deputies identified the 15-year-old suspect and arrested him. The man in his 20s was not in custody, Hart said.