This is something that will be watched closely. Stay tuned for demonstrations and actions against Brea police and Yorba Linda skinheads soon.

Assault Was Hate Crime, Police Say
Arab American, 18, was beaten in Yorba Linda. His family criticizes pace of the probe.
By William Lobdell and Christine Hanley
Times Staff Writers

March 4, 2003

Police have arrested two teenagers and are seeking other members of a mob suspected of beating an 18-year-old Arab American man in Yorba Linda while shouting white supremacist slogans.

Rashid Alam, friends said, was pummeled Feb. 22 on a residential street by as many as 20 teens, some of whom carried bats, a golf club and beer bottles. Witnesses said the attackers -- at least one with a swastika tattoo -- stripped off their shirts and yelled "White power!" as they descended on him and seven friends.

Although police and the victim's supporters agree in calling the attack a hate crime, they offer sharply different views of what led to it. Brea police, who patrol Yorba Linda under contract, described it as an arranged showdown between rival groups.

Police said they have determined the rumble was set up to settle a score between the two groups, whose members had been occasionally involved in smaller scrapes over the last six to eight months. Investigators do not know what initiated the clash between the two sides and said there is no evidence of racial epithets being used in the previous disputes.

Alam's friends and family, however, call it an unprovoked attack. The recent high school graduate was left with a fractured jaw, his eyes swollen and shattered facial bones that required surgeons to place two metal plates in his cheeks.

News of the assault and investigation surfaced Monday after Arab American activists and the victim's family accused authorities of trying to minimize the incident. Muslim leaders, who plan today to ask the FBI to take over the case, said they are puzzled that local police have given the incident no publicity and say they fear a new wave of hatred because of the looming war in Iraq.

But police say they did not announce the attack and the arrests because they feared publicity would stall their investigation.

"There were so many people involved. [The two sides] tend to like to hide each other. So, by working the case without making a lot of information public, it made it easier for us to identify the suspects in the case," said Sgt. Jack Conklin, pointing out that the first arrests were made within two days. "It wasn't like we were dragging our feet. We took it very seriously and moved forward on it quickly."

While Brea investigators said they wanted to control the spread of information, students at Esperanza High School in Anaheim, where some of those involved attend class, said the incident was the talk of the campus the Monday after the attack.

Police say witnesses reported that some youths were carrying baseball bats and a golf club. But there is conflicting information over who brought the weapons and whether they were even used. Police did not recover any weapons from the scene and said participants were gone when they arrived.

"There was no evidence that there were any weapons besides hands and feet," Conklin said.

Two juveniles who police said had minor roles in the attack were arrested two days after the incident on suspicion of misdemeanor assault, police said. Four others have been identified but not yet arrested, police said, including one they believe is responsible for the worst of Alam's injuries.

Conklin said there is no information that either group was a gang, but that some members of the attacking group do have white supremacist ties, and did shout slogans including "White power," and called their targets "camel jockeys."

Alam's parents and Muslim leaders said Monday that the Brea Police Department has moved too slowly in making arrests and has provided little information to the family about the investigation.

Ahmed Alam, the victim's Lebanese-born father, said a detective told him that the incident needed to be kept quiet until a thorough inquiry could be conducted.

But after he learned late last week that his son needed facial reconstructive surgery, the frustrated man said he decided his son's attackers needed to be brought to justice more quickly.

"Inside, I was burning," said Ahmed Alam, who owns an Arabic- and English-language newspaper based in Anaheim. "I don't understand why people can attack us just because we're Muslim or Arab."

Leaders of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said they see a nationwide increase in attacks on Arab Americans as the U.S. gears up for war in Iraq.

"We believe this recent increase in attacks on American Muslims is a direct result of the barrage of pro-war and anti-Islam rhetoric coming from right-wing and evangelical leaders," said Hussam Ayloush, the executive director of the council's Los Angeles chapter. "The FBI needs to take these incidents seriously to help provide a sense of security for ordinary American Muslims."

Mohamed Alam, the victim's 18-year-old brother, said he had gotten into a fight with one of the assailants last summer, but that police calling the confrontation a planned fight was "a lie."

Michael Tinio, another neighbor of Alam, said he saw Rashid tackled by one of the assailants, then surrounded by the group.

Tinio said the final blows came from an attacker who jumped up in the air a couple of times and landed with both feet on Alam's head.

"I was thinking, 'I hope he's not dead,' " Tinio said.

*

Times staff writer Mai Tran contributed to this report.

Nazi capital of So. Cal.!

The only way to stop these fascist nazi skinheads to to physically confront them in the streets, at their homes, and at thier meetings.
Adolf Hitler himself spoke (paraphrase), " IF The people would have stood up and crushed the nazi party in its infancy, we would never have been able to gain power".
We are all americans!!
smash the fascists
confront them and send them running back to thier holes.

Your website sucks. Your band sucks and you are a moron. Oh, and GG was a moron too. Thank God he's dead. That said, I'd love to get together and kill some nazi's with you. Let's start with Hamas.

Hey Fresca, did you know you have a cute little bear named after you?

http://www.auntie.com/dustcatchers/bears.asp 

Obviously, there's no resemblance given how much anger and hatred that voluminously pours fourth from your messages.  But it's still rather amusing.  Apologies to the bear, of course...

Thanks. I love that little guy. I think you'd be surprised what people think of me. Who knows, maybe not. But, I think you're neat.

and unbelievably dull.
No bonus for it.

i hate muslims, their an insult to america, america wasnt built on islam, if was built around chrstanity,fucking wake up,they only wanna covert americans to their fucking religion, the more nazi skinheads the better, go to any major city and youll see niggers beating on whites, we have to fight back and hold our country, you mother fucking p[acifists would rather had it over to the jews and muslims, than grow balls and fight for it.

The only way to end a flood is to stop the flow, and the only way to stop Islam from conquering the qorld is to deport their sorry sand nigger asses out of america!We dont need foreign pricks stealing our jobs, replacing our churches with mosques and then spitting in ourfaces and bombing our buildingsand burning our flags. KEEP AMERICA WHITE!

maybe we should start with the keyboard.
Then the qorld.