Police Chief Daryl Gates has been sharply rebuked by the President of the Los Angeles Police Commission, Reva Tooley, for releasing a report suggesting that the Soviet Union is sending criminals into the Los Angeles area, posing as Russian Jewish emigres, with the intention to increase crime and disrupt the 1984 Olympic Games.
Tooley said that on the basis of a briefing by Assistant Police Chief Marvin lannone she found “no basis for such speculation” and accused Gates of “unnecessarily whipping up fear,” Los Angeles Times staff writers Kenneth Reich and Joel Sappell reported.
The Soviet Jewish emigre community here has already demanded that Gates apologize to the Jewish community for releasing a 42-page pamphlet prepared by his detectives which alleged among other things that 20 Soviet emigres in the Los Angeles area are involved in criminal activities and that this could be part of a plot engineered by the KGB.
The pamphlet was given to a group of media and business executives at a briefing by Gates last Friday. The Police Chief subsequently acknowledged that the allegations were “speculations” and “suppositions” but maintained that “worst case” scenarios had to be anticipated. He added that if there is a threat, it comes from Soviet emigrants posing as Jews, not from Jews.
Si Frumkin, chairman of the Southern California Council for Soviet Jews, observed that Soviet Jewish emigrants here are “a well adjusted community of good Americans who do not cooperate with the KGB.” He noted that more than 20 police officers have been indicted for various offenses yet no one linked them to an international plot.
The report by Gates’ detectives contained a section titled “Soviet Emigre Mafia” which claimed that about 20 emigres have been involved in “murder, theft, fraud, forgery, counterfeiting, extortion, receiving stolen property and various vice activities.”
It added: “It is readily foreseeable that the crime problem involving Soviets will increase in size and severity as the Soviet emigrant population increases.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
