Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Swastika Painting Marks 2nd Hate Incident

SANTA CLARITA â€”  A 10-foot-tall swastika painted in ketchup on a Canyon Country driveway Easter Sunday was the second hate incident in the city in less than two weeks, authorities said Wednesday.

Racist flyers were discovered in student lockers at Placerita Junior High School in Newhall 13 days earlier. But Los Angeles County sheriff’s investigators believe that the swastika and flyers came from different sources.

“It would really be a surprise if they’re related,� said Sgt. Howard Fairchild of the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station. “It (the swastika) is not the m.o. of the other knuckleheads.�

Two men--one Latino and one African American--live in the home on Basel Street where the swastika was painted. Authorities believe that the drawing was probably a nasty prank aimed at the two men specifically, rather than the handiwork of neo-Nazis trying to spread the racist sentiment.

Similar Nazi-type graffiti appears about two or three times a year in Santa Clarita, Fairchild said.

“I think the thing with the flyers are people from out of the area trying to spread a message here,� Fairchild said. “I hope this (the ketchup swastika) is just one incident that’s not going to be repeated.�

More than 1,000 leaflets bearing derogatory remarks about Latinos and Jews were found at Placerita Junior High March 21, making the incident the largest distribution of hate literature in northern Los Angeles County in memory. School officials used the incident to begin discussions about cultural diversity, racism and tolerance.

A smaller batch of anti-Latino flyers--about a dozen--was discovered in soda packs, backpacks and women’s hygiene products at several Santa Clarita grocery stores in December.

In both incidents involving the printed materials, the leaflets gave a phone number for the White Aryan Resistance group in Los Angeles.

Authorities say hate flyers are protected by the First Amendment, and those responsible for distributing them on school campuses or in a store could only be charged with trespassing.