News briefs

Family bail-bonds business hire street gang
members

LOS ANGELES “”mdash; A La Habra family accused of running their
bail-bond agency like a criminal enterprise has ties to white
racist street gangs and hired some members as enforcers, it was
reported Monday.

Authorities were led to American Liberty Bail Bonds, owned and
operated by Adnan “˜”˜Dan” Yousef and his
family, during an investigation of white gangs in north Orange
County, the Los Angeles Times said.

An affidavit filed in the case said Yousef illegally employed at
least 15 unlicensed bail agents, many of them associates of gangs
going by such names as the Independent Skins, Public Enemy Number
One, the La Mirada Punks and La Mirada Hesh, the newspaper
said.

Public Enemy Number One is the largest white racist gang in
Orange County, according to Joyce Greenspan, regional director of
the Orange County/Long Beach chapter of the Anti-Defamation
League.

“˜”˜We’re finding that their racist beliefs are
secondary. Instead of attacking minorities like in the past, these
groups are more involved in running methamphetamines and other
criminal activity, like trafficking money,” Greenspan
said.

Proposal would allow hotel to stay while classes
built

LOS ANGELES “”mdash; School board member David Tokofsky offered a
last-minute proposal to save the Ambassador Hotel’s main
structure while building classrooms for up to 4,200 students
elsewhere on the site.

Sunday’s proposal comes on the eve of the school
board’s vote today on whether to approve a plan supported by
Superintendent Roy Romer that would preserve parts of the hotel but
raze most of it to build a school complex for the same number of
students.

Romer’s plan was criticized when it was released last
month.

The Los Angeles Conservancy said it didn’t go far enough
to restore the hotel. The family of late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy,
who was assassinated in the hotel in 1968, wants it demolished.

“˜”˜A compromise is available that meets
everyone’s goals,” Tokofsky said Sunday as he
stood in front of the 24-acre Ambassador site.

With reports from Bruin wire services.

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