The emergency call about a prowler seemed normal enough. But when a Denver policeman searched the working-class neighborhood Thursday, a young white man with short-cropped hair popped up from behind a bush and emptied an automatic pistol at him.
The bullets missed their target, but the ambush echoed as the latest of a series of skinhead attacks that belie Denver's modern image of tolerance and affluence.Two weeks ago, a 20-mile car chase ended in a blaze of gunfire and the arrest of a young man who proudly sported a tattoo, "God of Hate." Last week, another car chase, this one stretching for 30 miles, ended with the killing of a Denver policeman and the suicide of a skinhead.
Tuesday night, two white men taunted a West African immigrant at a bus stop in downtown Denver, then shot him to death. Nathan Thill, jailed for investigation of first-degree murder, denied shooting anyone until an alleged accomplice, Jeremiah Barnum, 23, surrendered late Thursday. Then, jailers allowed Thill to call in TV stations before dawn to say he was the only one involved.
"It wasn't a planned thing," Thill told KMGH-TV, speaking tersely. "Drank a little bit. I'm a deep thinker. Walked through town with my gun in my waist, saw the black guy and thought he didn't belong where he was at. How easy it would be to just take him out right there. Didn't seem like much to me."
A few hours later, at the station where the policeman slain last week had worked, some-one dropped off a dead pig. The carcass was daubed with the drawing of a police badge and "Vanderjagt" - the name of the dead policeman.
"The pig's head said that they are ready to go to war with the police," said Carl Rasch-ke, a University of Denver religion professor who has studied white supremacist groups here and nationwide. "This is the worst outbreak of skinhead violence that has happened anywhere. Nowhere has there been such a direct challenge to the police."
The crude racial hatred flies in the face of Denver's image of an open-minded city where a white majority population has twice elected Wellington Webb, a black man, as mayor. The violence flies in the face of Denver's world image as a city proud of its $5 billion international airport and of its smooth handling of a summit of world leaders last June.
But Denver's unexpected outbreak of violence, most of it by young, white skinheads, is part of a national trend in which skinhead groups are growing while Klan and neo-Nazi groups decline, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group based in Alabama that tracks hate groups nationwide.
According to the Center, the number of Klan and neo-Nazi groups dropped by one quarter from 1995 to 1996, hitting 140 last year.
"As the economy goes better for most people, you get less of this scapegoating rage," Mark Potok, a Center spokesman, said.
At the same time, the number of organized skinhead groups increased by 23 percent, hitting 37 in 1996. The difference seems to be demographic. The Klan often attracts a more middle-aged group. The skinheads draw on young people, often teen-agers facing job markets without high school degrees.
The largest city of the Rocky Mountain West, modern Denver has occasionally seen eruptions of white supremacist activity.
In 1984, Alan Berg, a radio talk show host, was shot to death outside his home. Three years later, two men were convicted of murder in the case. Members of a neo-Nazi gang, the men apparently targeted Berg because he was Jewish.
In 1992, a white supremacist rally triggered a two-hour riot by 1,000 counter-protesters.
But, in general, reported hate incidents tapered off in Colorado through the 1990s.
The number of victims of hate crimes dropped by 14 percent from 1994 to 1996, according to statistics from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. Anti-Semitic incidents dropped by three quarters during the 1990s, hitting 17 last year, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
"Police around Denver cracked down very hard on skinhead activity in the early 1990s," said Potok of the Law Center.