Mar. 17, 2012

Criminal Justice Community Honored

The Anti-Defamation League held it’s annual event Tuesday to honor the winners of the Helene & Joseph Sherwood Family Prize for Combating Hate. Held at the Skirball Community Center, the event honored individuals and groups in the law enforcement and criminal justice communities who had gone above and beyond to combat extremism and hatred. The event featured some emotional speeches by community members who had been affected by the actions of the individuals and task forces. They told their stories and how each of the honorees had helped make positive change a possibility. Among the honorees was Judge David Wesley, the assistant presiding judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court system. His work developing the Stopping Hate and Delinquency by Empowering Students (SHADES) program was cited in his choice as an honoree. SHADES is part of the larger Teen Court program that Wesley began in 1992. It is part of a partnership with the Museum of Tolerance and addresses juvenile offenders who have been involved in bullying and hate-based incidents. Like Teen Court, the low-level, first-time offenders undergo a trial and sentencing by a group of their peers. Sentences often involve community service or serving on future juries at Teen Court proceedings. Wesley said that the program gives young offenders the discipline needed to impress upon them the error of their ways while fostering a greater engagement with the community. Several members of the Los Angeles and Orange County district attorney’s offices were honored for their contributions to cracking down on racially motivated gang violence and extremist activities. Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Daniel Akemon was honored for his work in helping to convict a number of members of the Canoga Park Alabama Gang, a Hispanic gang that intentionally targeted African-Americans. Orange County Assistant District Attorney Jim Mendelson was honored for helping to prosecute members of several white supremacist gangs. The operation he was involved with netted the largest number of gang members in the county’s history. The U.S. attorney’s office was also well represented at the awards. Assistant U.S. Attorney Chief in the Santa Ana Office, Dennise Willett, was honored for her work with Mendelson on the white supremacy gang case in Orange County. Assistant U.S. attorney’s Reema El-Amamy and Justin Rhoades were honored for their efforts in prosecuting 51 members of the Azusa 13 Gang, another Hispanic gang that targeted African Americans in the small San Gabriel Community. More than a dozen federal convictions have already been secured in the case that featured a unique array of charges. It was the first case in the history of the Department of Justice in which a street gang was charged with federal racketeering, narcotics and civil rights conspiracies in the same indictment. The civil rights allegations were particularly rare —it was only the second time civil rights charges were levied against that type of organization. — Henry Meier