Burning of Cross Is Probed : Incident at Home for Mentally Disabled Jolts Neighborhood

The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating a cross burning on the front lawn of a board-and-care home for the mentally disabled in a racially mixed Mid-Wilshire neighborhood, a police spokesman said Friday.

A pair of two-foot wooden crosses were burned on the lawn of the home in the 1300 block of South Ogden Drive shortly before 10 p.m. Thursday, said Lt. Willie Pannell of the Wilshire Division.

“The manager of the building heard some noises out on the lawn, and when she went to check, saw the crosses,” he said.

Considered a Hate Crime

Because the owner of the home and the manager who reported the incident are black, Pannell said, the division’s hate crimes unit is investigating the incident as a racially motivated crime.

However, Pannell did not rule out the possibility that the incident could have been designed to scare away the mentally disabled residents of the home--or could have been a prank.

“Some people just don’t want what they see as a halfway house in their neighborhood,” he said. “Board-and-care facilities are not very popular sometimes. You could go either way. It could be racially motivated or because of the residents.”

Or, he added, “it could be a prank. It could be anything. We just don’t know. . . .

“There’s no indication that these people have had any problems with anyone. They’ve been there six years, and there’s no history of any problems. Nobody has spoken to them in a negative manner at all.”

Pannell said the cross burning is the first “in a long time” in that area.

He said police have no description of the suspect.

The owner of the facility, who declined to give her name, said she was not concerned about the possible message behind the incident.

“I don’t think we’ve ever had any (racial) problems in this neighborhood before,” she said. “It was probably just some kind of a prank. But if somebody did do this (out of racial hatred), then it’s a shame that this would happen in Los Angeles in 1989.”

She said she just wanted to forget the incident.

“Our big problem around here are the hidden drug dealers,” said Sam Allen, who lives nearby on Sierra Bonita Avenue. “I don’t think there are any skinheads or anybody like that running around here. But what I think and what is could be two different things.”

Officials at the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations said they had little doubt that the incident was racially motivated.

“It doesn’t have to be someone from the neighborhood,” said Bunny Nightwalker Hatcher, a senior consultant with the commission. “People come from (a distance) to commit hate crimes. It was racial. There are few things in the world that deliver as clear a racial message than a burning cross.”

Hatcher said that even if the message was intended for the residents of the house, “there’s a layer of racism there.”

“Even if it was for (the residents), the fact is the perpetrators thought that burning a cross would work,” she said. “That constitutes a racially motivated incident.”

According to the commission’s 1988 report on hate crimes in Los Angeles County, two of the 95 incidents of race-related hate crimes reported last year were cross burnings. Blacks composed 65% of the victims of racial hate crimes, according to the report.

The statistics were not broken down by location.

Officials at the agency said they have not yet tabulated statistics for 1989.