Racist fliers handed out at school

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2002 | 11:21 a.m.

Three teenagers have been arrested and charged with distributing racist fliers promoting "white power" at Cimarron-Memorial High School, police said Monday.

Two juveniles and a 19-year-old Las Vegas man were arrested after a surveillance camera captured the three in the parking lot of Cimarron-Memorial on Oct. 14, Sgt. Ken Young, spokesman for the Clark County School District police, said.

The two juveniles are high-school age boys who are home-schooled and not enrolled in Clark County, police said. Matthew Sowders, 19, who was also arrested, does not currently attend school in Clark County, police said.

All three were charged with misdemeanor littering, loitering and distribution of literature promoting violence. A pair of brass knuckles was confiscated from one of the juveniles, Young said.

The fliers, photocopied onto white paper with large black lettering, urged whites to "fight for your race" and included a list of Internet addresses for websites promoting white supremacy, Young said.

Cimarron-Memorial was the second school in the district's northwest region to be hit with the fliers, Young said. The previous week the materials turned up at Centennial High School.

Two other campuses also reported finding similar fliers on cars -- Coronado High School in the southeast region and Sierra Vista High School in the southwest.

An investigation is ongoing to determine whether the fliers are part of a larger campaign and whether the teens had any role in those incidents.

This was the first time police were able to catch someone distributing the materials, which have surfaced sporadically in various forms over the past few years, Young said.

Occasionally a principal will report finding a handful of fliers around holidays with minority cultural focuses, such as Martin Luther King Jr. Day or Cinco de Mayo, Young said.

"They use those days as a platform to complain," Young said.

There have been no reports of white supremacy activities on any of the four campuses hit with the fliers, Young said.

Susan Brager, the Clark County School Board member whose district includes Coronado and Sierra Vista, said while the arrests were disturbing, she hoped they would send a message to the public.

"There are always going to be kids that are ugly and vicious to each other, but it's something we will not tolerate," Brager said. "This is a good time for parents to sit down with their kids, talk to them and really listen to what their children are saying they're feeling and thinking."

Craig Hill, assistant principal of Cimarron-Memorial, called the incident a "fishing expedition."

"If they were skinheads trying to solicit membership, they were in the wrong place," Hill said. "We have a very multicultural campus, and in fact many of our students were upset that anyone would even think to try and recruit here for a group of this nature."

Nate Tolliver, whose daughter attends Sierra Vista, reported to the Clark County School Board last spring that she and other black students were being harassed by a small group of white classmates. Tolliver said this morning the climate at Sierra Vista has "improved significantly" since the band of students behind the racial taunts had been removed from campus.

Tolliver said he was angry to hear that students from outside the school community had come on campus with the fliers.

"They shouldn't be trying to stir up trouble. That's a step backward for all of us," Tolliver said.

Security officers at Cimarron-Memorial first noticed the activity on closed-circuit televisions shortly before school let out for the day. When an officer went out to investigate, the young men ran away to a waiting car, dumping a large box of fliers behind them. The officer was able to radio a description of their car to campus police, who apprehended the young men as they left campus.

"They were hitting the campuses at a very high rate this time around, moving quickly from one school to the next instead of spacing it out," Young said. "In this case, the surveillance cameras were the key."