Hate Crimes

The state House of Representatives killed a bill that would have extended a hate crimes law to protect gays. The bill would have made it a crime to target people based on such factors as age, economic condition, disability, gender or sexual orientation. It was rejected, 54 to 46. Republicans, who accounted for all but five of the opponents, argued that the bill would stifle speech and could prevent clergy from speaking out against homosexuality in their sermons.

I am proud to live in and represent the most diverse region in the most diverse country in the history of the world. Such a country clearly needs to take strong action against crimes that threaten to tear apart the very fabric of our society. In the most recent year, 9,000 hate crimes were reported throughout the United States. More than 40% of those hate crimes were against African Americans, roughly 13% were against Jews, about 12% were targeted against the victims' sexual orientation.

A day after making a classroom speech about racial equality at Saugus High School a month ago, 17-year-old Mohamed Mostafa was assaulted by a group of white teen-agers who taunted him with racial slurs and then beat him up on his way to school. "They said keep your mouth shut," while punching and kicking him, Mohamed recalls. "And go back to Africa."

In what police said they are investigating as a possible hate crime, a 35-year-old white motorist was arrested for allegedly striking and killing a Latino pedestrian with her car early Friday outside a bagel bakery. Police said Marie E. West of Redondo Beach ran over Jesus Plascencia, 66, because he is Latino, and the Los Angeles County district attorney's office has assigned a special hate crimes prosecutor to the case.

Prosecutors said they plan to file hate-crime charges today against a suspected skinhead accused of killing a black man during a Huntington Beach dispute and attempting to kill two Latino men in an assault a month earlier. Additional hate-crime charges will also be lodged against a 17-year-old who is charged in the Huntington Beach murder, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Jim Tanizaki. Both defendants are scheduled to be arraigned on the new charges this morning in Municipal Court in Westminster.

In what police are calling a hate crime, a 21-year-old man was arrested Sunday on suspicion of bludgeoning a gay man with a glass vase and stealing his property. Michael Reign Caywood of Huntington Beach was booked into the Huntington Beach City Jail shortly after the 5:30 a.m. assault that left a 31-year-old man with head, facial and chest injuries, Lt. Luis Ochoa said.

The savage murder of Matthew Shepard last October culminated a startling and disturbing recent epidemic in hate crimes: an African American man dragged to his death in Texas; a wave of church bombings across the South; synagogue desecrations in New England; and brutal murders of gay men in Buffalo, Richmond and rural Alabama. While experts disagree about the frequency of such incidents (many remain unreported), no one doubts their mounting ferocity.

Vandals who broke into Jill Williamson's Pacoima home Wednesday did more than steal a VCR and jewelry--they defaced the home with racial slurs in what police are calling a hate crime. The incident occurred between 7:30 a.m. and noon Wednesday. Vandals ransacked a room, slashed a water bed and scrawled racial slurs on the walls of the living room, Los Angeles Police Detective Larry Queen said. "The fact that someone marked the epithet on the walls classifies it as a hate crime," Queen said.

Three teenagers from Pacific Palisades were arrested Friday in West Hollywood for allegedly spraying urine on two people from a passing car. The boys apparently had driven to West Hollywood with the intention of spraying gay men with urine, Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies said. The juveniles, two 16-year-olds and a 14-year-old, were booked for conspiracy to commit a hate crime and for assault with a caustic chemical. They were released to the custody of their parents, Sgt.

A white supremacist parolee has pleaded guilty to committing a hate crime by kicking an African American bouncer at a Huntington Beach bar. Raymond Walter Thomas, 35, of Placentia, who had been on parole for car theft, was sentenced to two years in state prison for felony battery, authorities said Friday. Police have not released the name of the victim, who suffered minor scrapes in the incident.