Asians Los Angeles County

In 1977, Frederic Hsieh, a brash young Chinese developer, decided to meet the elders of Monterey Park and explain his sudden interest in their city. Hsieh invited 20 of the city's most prominent civic and business leaders--all of them white--to a traditional Chinese lunch. But what he had to tell his guests was hardly gracious.

The Chinese government's crackdown on a vast spiritual movement called Falun Gong is resonating sharply in Southern California, where Asian immigrants and others have increasingly embraced the mystical ideology. Many local followers say they are deeply troubled by reports that more than 5,000 fellow members have been rounded up in China since the sect's beliefs and practices were outlawed there last month.

The Los Angeles County documented in the 1990 Census is a metropolis in motion, a place where dramatic population shifts are breaking down old strongholds of racial and ethnic separatism but perhaps laying the foundation for new ones. The traditional boundaries have blurred in a variety of ways. An expanding Latino population has begun to overtake black majorities in Watts and other areas of South-Central Los Angeles, while challenging Anglo dominance of several San Fernando Valley communities.

Pushing forward with plans to crack down on criminals who target Los Angeles County's vast Asian community, Sheriff Lee Baca on Monday showed off the department's freshly painted headquarters for the new Asian Crimes Task force. At a ceremony attended by China's Los Angeles consul general and other dignitaries, Baca officially dedicated the new 6,300-square-foot headquarters, located in an office complex in Industry.

The myth of Asian Americans as the successful "model minority" is so widely accepted that more than 13% of poor Asians in Los Angeles County go unnoticed by public policy-makers, according to a report released Wednesday by UCLA's Urban Planning Program. "Policy-makers have a lot of misperceptions about Asians," said urban planner Dennis G. Arguelles, an author of the report, which is the first to examine poor and low-income Asians in Los Angeles.

Bright, articulate, polite and full of promise, 16-year-old Coung Minh Hoang will soon go on trial for murder. Authorities say the Vietnam-born teen-ager, homeless at age 13 and abandoned by his parents, carved out a life for himself among the growing population of Chinese gangs in the San Gabriel Valley. It was a life of days spent far from school and of nights gambling. It was a life in tutelage to his gang dai lo , or big brother.

A 16-year-old Vietnamese youth was shot to death in Pomona on Sunday, the victim of what police believe was the first gang violence initiated by Asians in a city that has long suffered from battles waged by black and Latino gangs. Luc Huynh was standing outside a party shortly after midnight when unknown assailants in three vehicles sped past him, firing a spray of bullets, said Pomona Police Lt. Larry Todd.

Federal and local authorities raided three suspected houses of prostitution in the San Gabriel Valley on Thursday, arresting three men and seven women alleged to have ties to an international Asian crime syndicate. Most of those arrested were Mainland Chinese nationals, although they included a Thai and a Malaysian, all of whom were in the country illegally, said Sgt. Tom Budds of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, who works the Asian Organized Crime Unit.

Asian gangs in the San Gabriel Valley were targeted Wednesday in a dawn operation involving more than 300 federal, state and local law enforcement officers. Two adults and six juveniles were arrested, and 32 handguns and assault rifles were seized in what Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies billed as "the largest single-day assault on Asian organized crime in the history of the county." Deputies and other officers fanned out through the San Gabriel Valley at 5 a.m.

Pushing forward with plans to crack down on criminals who target Los Angeles County's vast Asian community, Sheriff Lee Baca on Monday showed off the department's freshly painted headquarters for the new Asian Crimes Task force. At a ceremony attended by China's Los Angeles consul general and other dignitaries, Baca officially dedicated the new 6,300-square-foot headquarters, located in an office complex in Industry.

By overwhelming margins, Los Angeles County in 1997 had larger populations of Latinos and Asians than any other county in the nation, according to recent estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau. Other Southern California counties--from San Diego to Ventura--also showed distinctly larger numbers of Latinos and people of Asian and Pacific Island heritage, growth that experts attribute to continued immigration, as well as to relatively high birthrates between 1990 and 1997.

Five men were arrested Monday on charges of extorting money from companies that distribute fresh seafood to Asian restaurants in the San Gabriel Valley. The men demanded that TL Trading Co. of Montebello and Wo Wong Fish Trading Co. of Rosemead pay $600 a truckload to ensure the "safe" delivery of the fish, according to a federal complaint.

Police raided 10 San Fernando Valley homes Friday in search for evidence against gang members, arresting a Long Beach man and a 15-year-old boy and seizing four firearms. About 50 police officers took part in the early morning sweep, which authorities said was aimed at a Valley-area Asian gang with about 100 members suspected of an increasing number of crimes.

The tip came from a trusted informant. Eleven young Asian gang members were holed up in an Inglewood motel, plotting to kidnap the owner of a South Bay computer company and terrorize his family unless the businessman handed over his multimillion-dollar inventory of computer chips. By early morning, the Asian Organized Crime Unit of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department had swung into action. Undercover detectives were dispatched to the motel. More scattered in nearby cars.

Capping an 18-month investigation into some of the most violent gang activity in Los Angeles County, more than 200 officers from several agencies fanned out across the San Gabriel Valley before sunrise Thursday, simultaneously arresting 23 known Asian gang members and confiscating a cache of their weapons.

These guys are tired of basic black, especially when it comes to their hair. For many Asian Americans, tinting is today's hip statement. "Everybody's doing it," says Alan Lin, 24, of Arcadia, who turned his black hair a glossy chestnut three months ago. "It's fashionable. It's unique. It makes me stand out." The young and the tinted hang out in the San Gabriel Valley's hot nightspots, such as St. Honore's Cafe in Monterey Park or Good Time Cafe in the mammoth San Gabriel Shopping Center.

About This Section The Times today presents a comprehensive look at the evolving demographies of Los Angeles County, examining the ethnic composition of more than 160 communities and how it has changed during the past 10 years. A computer comparison of new 1990 census data and 1980 figures indicates that the county is less segregated than it was 10 years ago. At the same time, the numbers suggest that new pockets of ethnic imbalance may be in the making.

A violent rivalry in the San Gabriel Valley between a Chinese gang and gangs of mixed Asian heritage--Vietnamese, Filipino and Vietnamese Chinese--may have led to the shooting deaths of two youths at a San Marino high school graduation party in June, authorities said Thursday. When members of a mixed Asian gang arrived at the party and discovered that rival Chinese gang members were there, they left to seek powerful weapons, including an AK-47, investigators said.

Two men brandishing handguns burst into a home here, tied up two teen-age girls and began searching their house for valuables late Saturday, police said. As the robbers rummaged through the house in the 700 block of Patterson Avenue, the girls' parents returned, interrupting the theft. The intruders then pistol-whipped the girls' mother and fled through a rear door as the father ran after them, police said. The father got into his car and pursued the men onto the Ventura Freeway.

The Taiwanese mother barely opened her front door when several clean-cut Vietnamese youths rang the bell of her West Covina home last year, looking for "Dave." But that tiny crack was all they needed. Wielding guns, they burst in. "Where are the moneybags?" they demanded, after cutting the phone lines, tying up family members, putting blankets over their heads and manhandling them. The crime was one of hundreds of home invasions that plagued Asian families in the San Gabriel Valley last year.