San Bernardino struggled with hate groups before shooting
The city rocked by a mass shooting that killed 14 people Wednesday has long been a hotbed of hate and violence.
San Bernardino, Calif., struggled with a rash of hate groups and homicides amid a city bankruptcy in the years before gunmen opened fire at a county employee party at the Inland Regional Center.
Nothing was immediately known about any of the suspects and officials have noted recent drops in violent crimes after a two-year spike. But skinheads and neo-Nazis have shown pronounced influence in the area east of Los Angeles known as the Inland Empire.
The Anti-Defamation League has cited examples in both San Bernardino County and neighboring Riverside County of the Comrades of Our Race's Struggle, the Inland Empire Skinheads, the Nazi Low Riders and a splinter group called Public Enemy Number One.
Police in San Bernardino said in 2009 that they had probed murders, home invasions and drug trafficking linked to members of the Inland Empire Skinheads over a seven-year period, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office arrested seven members of the offshoot “Hammerskin Nation” on suspicion of assault and battery on April 20 — Hitler's birthday — that year, KNBC-TV reported.
Police in Hemet in Riverside County cuffed 23 white supremacists in an investigation into attacks on cops in the area the following year, the Los Angeles Times reported. Researchers and investigators counted at least a dozen hate groups in the two counties.
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