Hate Crimes

Federal authorities Thursday accused a south Los Angeles County street gang of a litany of crimes, including the murder of a sheriff's deputy and racially motivated attacks designed to drive African Americans from their town.

A Colorado man who says he bludgeoned his date to death out of rage and shock after discovering she was biologically male was convicted Wednesday of first-degree murder and a hate crime. Jurors deliberated about two hours before finding Allen Ray Andrade, 32, guilty of killing Angie Zapata, 18, of Greeley last July. District Judge Marcelo Kopcow swiftly sentenced him to life in prison without possibility of parole -- the state's mandatory sentence for first-degree murder.

The house, a three-bedroom cream-colored residence on a peaceful street, even had yellow and red roses waving merrily from the front lawn. And while the backyard was cramped, there was a nectarine tree, a red swing set and a small gazebo. This is it, Channise Davy thought. Home.

Dawn Boldrin took note when a subdued Larry King showed up for her class at E.O. Green Junior High in Oxnard dressed in his school uniform without the flashy boots and makeup. The teacher heard he'd been roughed up the day before by boys put off by his effeminate manner. So, as she walked her eighth-graders to the computer lab on Feb. 12, 2008, she pulled him aside.

Joseph Berg, a 43-year-old entrepreneur, sat brooding and alone on a bloodstained sidewalk Sunday, a few feet from the policeman blocking the stairwell to the basement crime scene. Fifteen years ago, Berg first took refuge in that basement, then a newly established community center of the Tel Aviv Gay and Lesbian Assn. "I came here, found people to share myself with, to be who I was with others," he recalled.

Only a few weeks ago, race relations had reached such a low point in the troubled East Texas town of Paris that federal Justice Department mediators were called in to try to bring together black and white citizens, but the public meeting quickly dissolved into rancor.

At the Canoga Park Bowl, everyone knew James Shamp. His job was to clean, but he did so much more. Bowlers described him as a comedian and their loyal cheerleader. He greeted regulars with a big handshake followed by a succession of jokes that would continue through their games. "He was the black Chevy Chase," said Robert Battle, a member of the Equally Offensive bowling team. .

During the last year, the homeless in Los Angeles County have been set on fire, stabbed, shot and beaten with baseball bats in attacks. Advocates for the homeless say the incidents have become more violent but until now no one has tracked such crimes countywide. Los Angeles County supervisors on Tuesday unanimously recommended that sheriff's deputies, prosecutors and the county Human Relations Commission start tracking and reporting attacks on the homeless as hate crimes.

A day after an anti-Semite allegedly shot and killed a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, experts disagreed about whether it was an isolated event or the latest sign of a growing threat by domestic hate groups. The danger appeared to come from two directions: far-right fanatics who feed on domestic conspiracy theories and Muslim extremists who oppose U.S. policies abroad. Both have launched deadly attacks in recent weeks.

Anti-Semitic scrawlings on residential walls were discovered over a two-mile area of Tarzana on Thursday morning, raising anxiety in the predominantly Jewish neighborhood and triggering a hate-crime investigation by police. Residents of the upscale neighborhood just south of Ventura Boulevard awoke to find swastikas and other anti-Semitic graffiti spray-painted in red on four perimeter walls, police said.