Hate crime on decline

Dave Brooks

While Huntington Beach is moving forward in its efforts to promote

racial diversity, the city needs to continue to pursue policies to

deal with hate crime incidents and educate the public, a panel

compiled by the city’s Human Relations Task Force reported last week.

Police Chief Ken Small, the first speaker on the five-person

panel, pointed out there has been a dramatic drop in crimes directed

at others because of one’s nationality, ethnicity, sexual orientation

or religion. Since October 2002, there have been 18 mostly nonviolent

hate crimes reported to authorities, and neo-Nazi gangs have all but

been completely marginalized.

“Still, one hate crime is too many,” Small said.

UC Irvine Criminology Professor Valerie Jenness called the city’s

establishment of the Human Relations Task Force nine years ago a

positive step toward reducing hate crimes. She added it should be

coupled with clear police policies on what defines a hate crime and

how such incidents should be treated.

“It’s really a marriage between the two, under the right

conditions, that bears a strong resemblance toward success,” she

said. “It’s important to have community responsibility, coupled with

the correct police tactics.”

The Human Relations Task Force is a city-sponsored volunteer group

formed in 1996 by former City Council members Ralph Bauer and Shirley

Detloff. It was formed after skinheads attacked George Mondragon, an

American Indian, near the Huntington Beach Pier.

Erik Roy Anderson, a 20-year-old Huntington Beach resident at the

time, stabbed the San Bernardino resident 28 times in the head and

upper body.

Mondragon’s stabbing was just one in the long line of vicious hate

crimes that Huntington Beach was known for since the 1980s when

police battled a number of white supremacist gangs.

The gangs had about 50 members each, with 50 more skinheads

roaming the streets with no affiliation, according to a police report

issued in November 1989.

Hate boiled over in the city again in September 1994 when

African-American resident Vernon Windell Flournoy was brutally shot

while walking down Beach Boulevard. Flournoy managed to stumbled into

a McDonald’s before collapsing dead in front of shocked diners.

Two teenagers, Jonathan Russell Kennedy of Huntington Beach and

Robert Wofford of Laguna Niguel, were charged with that racially

motivated slaying. Kennedy was convicted and sentenced to 19 years in

prison.

Fears rose again in March 2004 after a group of 14-year-old boys savagely beat a Filipino man with metal pipes, screaming racial slurs

and displaying Nazi-salutes in between blows. Just months before, a

local former Marine made headlines after threatening to kill an

Iranian couple. The Marine was reportedly angry over the Sept. 11

attacks.

Since then there have been a few minor incidents of hate crime,

Small said, adding that any time a hate crime occurs, the community

needs to show overwhelming opposition to the hateful gesture.

“We need to let the person know that the community supports them

and that the hate crime is an act of an individual,” he said.

Ocean View High School senior Lindsay Mitchell said it was also

important to promote diversity at the educational level. She said her

school has undertaken a series of initiatives to promote diversity on

campus, including a special workshop to help students break down

stereotypes.

“All these students are coming together and noticing how they

classify people,” she said. “It might seem natural, but why should we

stereotype people by their clothes or music or friends?”

By promoting diversity at schools, in government and in the

community, those who commit hate crimes will be deterred from doing

so, said Ken Inouye of the Orange County Human Relations Commission.

“As long as people understand that this community stands united, a

lot of these ornery folks who do this kind of mischief are going to

discover that their comments are not welcome and they’re going to go

away,” he said.

* DAVE BROOKS covers City Hall. He can be reached at (714)

966-4609 or by e-mail at [email protected].