Patrols Stepped Up At Desert Tolerance Center After D.C. Shooting

RANCHO MIRAGE – Rancho Mirage is home to a new museum remembering the Holocaust. But with Wednesday’s shooting at the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., Riverside County Sheriff’s deputies are adding extra patrols at the desert-area museum.

Earl Greif survived the Holocaust, lost his parents in a Nazi death camp, and helped build the Rancho Mirage Tolerance Museum.

He heard of the Washington, D.C., Holocaust museum shooting when we called him. He’s been thinking of the senseless violence ever since.

“The shooting that’s going on now…[there are] crazy people in this world. They are losers. They just don’t find a job or they’re jealous of other people, so they go and shoot,” says Greif.

But the suspected shooter is four years older than 84-year-old Greif. Many people are calling the director of the Rancho Mirage museum concerned at what images they’re seeing in the Nation’s Capitol.

“Lieutenant Navarro from the Rancho Mirage Police Department called to make sure we were aware of it,” museum director Melissa Banwer explained. “He was going to provide some extra patrols for us.”

The Anti-Defamation League says there are three hate groups near the desert.

The Nazi Lowriders are strong in prison. The Berdoo Skinheads sometimes recruit around Yucca Valley. And the group calling themselves Comrades of Our Race’s Struggles concentrate in Western Riverside County.

The Tolerance Education Center of Rancho Mirage opened May 15th. It gets around a dozen visitors a day.

Greif adds, “School busses will come around Riverside County. By the busloads. Teaching them about Rwanda, Croatia, Cambodia, and what’s happening in Sudan.”

For more details on the Tolerance Education Center, visit http://www.toleranceeducationcenter.org/.