LOS ANGELES (CN) - The Department of Justice demands that two High Desert cities in Los Angeles County pay $12.5 million for L.A. Sheriff's deputies' harassment of minorities in subsidized housing.
The Justice Department last week released findings that officers in the Sheriff's Department stations in Lancaster and Palmdale discriminated against blacks and Latinos in Antelope Valley.
Antelope Valley, in northern L.A. County and southern Kern County, on the edge of the Mojave Desert, has a reputation as a locus of hate crimes.
The Justice Department told Courthouse News the federal government will release details of any settlement, if and when the parties reach an agreement.
The Justice Department said on June 28 that it had reached a preliminary agreement with the Sheriff's Department to make across-the-board changes in the way it polices the Antelope Valley. The federal investigation revealed evidence of widespread discrimination, harassment and intimidation against African Americans in low-income subsidized, or Section 8, housing.
Antelope Valley has the highest rate of racially motivated hate crimes in Los Angeles County. The Justice Department said in a findings letter that as early as the 1960s minority families were shut out of the area by racially motivated housing practices.
As Antelope Valley housing became more affordable in the 1980s, black people and Latinos moved in. Racial tensions increased, with a series of hate crimes in Palmdale in the '90s, the Justice Department said in the letter.
"In 1990, during Palmdale city elections, an African-American female candidate's campaign sign was spray-painted, 'vote white.' In 1997, three white youths allegedly murdered a black man in Palmdale so that one of the youths could earn a white supremacist tattoo," the Justice Department's findings letter states.
"In the last decade, hate crimes have continued to take place: two black men were allegedly stabbed by a white mayoral candidate's son, who was reciting 'white power' slogans the night of the crime; two homes in Palmdale were vandalized with racially offensive words and a swastika; and in August 2010, a predominantly African-American church in Palmdale was firebombed."
Racial conflicts persist.
Elected officials, including Lancaster Mayor Rex Parris, were vocal in their hostility toward low-income subsidized housing residents, the Justice Department said.
Parris told the L.A. Times that Lancaster would not pay a dime.
"If the county wants to pay millions, let them do it, but Lancaster isn't going to pay 10 cents of it," Parris told the Times.
The Justice Department said in its findings letter: "Racial stereotypes evident in past statements by some within Lancaster and Palmdale leadership are also reflected within LASD [Los Angeles Sheriff Department] ranks in the Antelope Valley."
Justice's Civil Rights Division found an unreasonable pattern or practice of pedestrian and vehicle stops of black Antelope Valley residents, unconstitutional searches and seizures, and excessive force.
Black people in Antelope Valley were stopped and searched at a 10 to 15 percent higher rate than whites in 2011, the Justice Department found.
Justice also found evidence that deputies frequently detained people without justification in the back seat of squad cars.