A CITY IN CRISIS: HOPE AND PRAYER AMID THE ASHES : Ventura County Struggles With Issues of Race : Reaction: Sixty-six percent of the county is white and is adjusting to becoming more mixed. But many say the King case verdicts show it is time to heighten sensitivity to ethnic matters.

VENTURA —  With devastating suddenness in the aftermath of the Rodney G. King verdicts, critics throughout the nation have branded both Ventura County and Simi Valley as bastions of racism so insidious that the truth could not be recognized.

Outspoken Los Angeles defense lawyer Stephen Yagman summed up the criticisms with a question immediately after the not-guilty verdicts: “Who in the world would expect a bunch of Ku Klux Klanners in Simi Valley to find police guilty who had beaten up an African-American?”

Such comments have been repeated so often since a Ventura County jury in Simi Valley cleared four white Los Angeles policemen in the King beating that they have taken on the aura of truth.

Even state Sen. Ed Davis (R-Santa Clarita), a former Los Angeles police chief who has represented parts of Ventura County for years, suggested that it could have been a mistake to put a black prosecutor in front of a predominantly white Ventura County jury.

Local officials, though expressing surprise at the King verdicts, have jumped to defend Ventura County’s reputation, insisting that the county is no more racist than the nation as a whole.

In fact, they are hoping that a series of appearances on national news broadcasts and a visit today by former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, appearing at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, will help wipe away some of the tarnish.

“I think we’d like to get out of the spotlight we’ve had for the past few days,” said Mayor Pro Tem Bill Davis, “and get back into the spotlight as the home of the Presidential Library. That’s more positive.” Davis is slated to represent Simi Valley on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show today.

Yet the King verdicts have prompted some to believe that it is time to heighten the county’s sensitivity to racial issues.

Assistant Sheriff Richard Bryce, whose department was shaken last year by 11 black deputies’ claims of harassment and institutional bias, said this county may be racially insensitive to blacks in particular.

“There is not the degree of sensitivity or experience with black issues that there might be in other counties like Los Angeles,” he said.

And Oxnard Police Chief Robert Owens, who is white, said he has felt the barbs of racism affect his city since he arrived in 1970.

“Ventura County has not come out of the closet on the race issue,” Owens said. “We’ve not openly discussed race at all. There is a feeling, almost a hostility, among most other Ventura County cities that Oxnard has some built-in flaws because of its racial and ethnic makeup.”

By and large, racism is subtle here and not as bad as it was 35 years ago when “No Negros or Dogs Allowed” signs could be found in some businesses, black leaders said.

Still, it has only been 20 years since a county cultural heritage group considered allowing the site of a black man’s turn-of-the-century lynching to be identified as “Nigger Canyon,” said Fred Jones, former president of the NAACP Ventura County chapter.

And there has been a resurgence in racial incidents as Ventura County--still 66% white--has adjusted to becoming more racially mixed, minority leaders said. The fast-growing Latino and Asian communities now make up 26% and 5%, respectively, of the county’s population. The black proportion has held steady at about 2%.

“The Rodney King verdicts have verified the fact that we have a lot of work to do in addressing the issue of police abuse and racism here at home,” said Marcos Vargas, executive director of El Concilio, a Latino social service organization.

Indeed, in recent years Ventura County has been marked by a spate of racial incidents and controversies that have divided communities.

Last week, a Latina activist in Camarillo filed seven complaints against the Sheriff’s Department, detailing incidents she says show a pattern of police harassment and brutality against Latino youths. The department said at least some of the charges have no foundation.

In February, a Westlake fifth-grader dressed like Adolf Hitler, wore a swastika armband and was awarded second place in an oratory contest after giving a speech sympathetic to the German leader and never mentioning the Holocaust. Jewish leaders protested and the school apologized.

In October, Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) proposed a constitutional amendment that would deny citizenship to illegal immigrants’ children born in this country. And last fall, 150 Ventura High School students signed a petition to start a White Student Union after a Black Student Union was formed at the school. A week earlier the president of the Black Student Union was slugged as he left school by a man who yelled a racial slur.

In addition, at least four Jewish temples in Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks and Ventura have been repeatedly vandalized and marked by anti-Semitic graffiti since 1989. A Jewish memorabilia store in Ventura was also damaged.

Many local blacks and Latinos say they do not need such a list to tell them that they are not altogether welcome in Ventura County.

John Hatcher, president of the county chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, was reminded of that in late 1990, when “We Is Apes” was sprayed in two-foot-high letters on the garage of his Oxnard home.

Hatcher had predicted when the beating trial was moved to Simi Valley in November that the four accused officers would be found not guilty. He said last week that the county’s political conservatism has bred racism among some residents.

A Times study of 1990 census data found that Ventura County is still largely made up of highly segregated neighborhoods and that more whites live in predominantly white enclaves today than a decade ago.

About 57% of white residents now live in communities where at least four of five residents are white, compared to 53% in 1980. And four of the county’s five largest cities--Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley, Ventura and Camarillo--remain at least 77% white.

Though one-third of Ventura County’s 669,000 residents are minority members, Latino and black leaders say they have made few inroads into the corridors of local power.

A Times survey last year found that Latinos held only 11.8% of city council and school board positions countywide but made up 26.5% of the county’s population. Just three of 52 council members and 14 of 92 school board members were Latino. No minority has sat on the county Board of Supervisors in this century.

A 1991 Times survey also found that despite a decade of affirmative-action hiring, white men still held a disproportionate share of local government jobs in Ventura County. They held at least two-thirds of all administrative posts in all but one city government, Oxnard’s, and in the county government.

The hiring and promotion of blacks has become a particularly sensitive issue in Ventura County government, where a black clerk, a black jailer and 11 black deputies have filed complaints about lack of opportunity.

Richard Wittenberg, the county chief administrator, said the county is trying to recruit and promote minorities, but it takes time for minority members to reach management positions. He said it is not fair to generalize about Ventura County because of one jury’s decisions.

“I think individually we all have to be more sensitive about race,” he said. “I don’t think you can make a judgment about an entire county.”

Times staff writer Mack Reed contributed to this story.