Prison worker’s East Bay clash with Muslims probed as hate crime

Denise Slader, an employee of the California Department of Corrections, confronted two men of Middle Eastern descent, who were praying near the entrance to Lake Chabot Regional Park around 3 p.m. Sunday, said Carolyn Jones, a spokeswoman for the park service. less Denise Slader, an employee of the California Department of Corrections, confronted two men of Middle Eastern descent, who were praying near the entrance to Lake Chabot Regional Park around 3 p.m. Sunday, said ... more Photo: Facebook Photo: Facebook Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Prison worker’s East Bay clash with Muslims probed as hate crime 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

A state Corrections Department employee is being investigated for a possible hate crime after she was captured on video aggressively confronting two Muslim men who were praying in a Castro Valley park over the weekend, officials said Wednesday.

Denise Slader clashed with the men of Middle Eastern descent as they were praying near the entrance to Lake Chabot Regional Park around 3 p.m. Sunday, said Carolyn Jones, a spokeswoman for the park district.

Slader apparently made a comment to a friend about the men, and one of them walked over and tried to engage her in a discussion about religion. The conversation escalated to the point where Slader began shouting at the men, “Your God is Satan,” “Allah is Satan,” and “The Quran is evil,” Jones said.

#Islamophobia After praying, this lady approached us and started yelling at us that we're brainwashed for believing in Allah, "Allah is evil" she said. I started video taping her, I ,also, was hit by an umbrella before taking a shower of coffee right on my face. And what happened next was this.. Posted by Rasheed Albeshari on Monday, December 7, 2015

When another man began shooting video of her, Slader hit him with an umbrella and then threw coffee on him, officials said.

The video of the altercation has since been shared on social media and is getting thousands of views and comments.

“After praying, this lady approached us and started yelling at us that we’re brainwashed for believing in Allah. ‘Allah is evil,’ she said,” Rasheed Albeshari wrote on his Facebook page, where he posted the video on Monday. “I started video taping her, I, also, was hit by an umbrella before taking a shower of coffee right on my face.”

Staffer intervenes

In the video, a uniformed park staffer intervened only to witness Slader appear to attack the man videotaping her.

“The people you tortured are going to be in eternity in heaven,” Slader is heard saying in the video. “You are very deceived by Satan. Your mind has been taken over — brainwashed. You have nothing but hate, nothing but hate.”

Police from the East Bay Regional Park District got to the scene after things had calmed down and took statements from everyone involved.

Slader works as a program technician in the parole division for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, agency spokesman Luis Patino said in a statement Wednesday. She has been with the department for 10 years and her status as an employee has not changed following the weekend run-in, he said.

Code of conduct

The department “expects its employees to abide by a code of conduct that includes respecting the rights of others regardless of personal characteristics including ancestry and religion,” Patino said. “In addition to the police investigation, an internal CDCR investigation into the incident is ongoing.”

Albeshari was sitting in a car when he saw the woman approach his friends who had just finished praying and heard her yelling that “Allah is Satan,” he said. His friend told the woman that they “loved Jesus and believe in Jesus and respect Jesus. He tried to calm her down, but that didn’t work,” Albeshari said.

Drives for Uber, Lyft

Albeshari — who lives in San Francisco and drives for Uber and Lyft when not studying at the City College of San Francisco — decided to get out of the car and take a video of the incident. He said he and his friends had initially gone to the park to barbecue and play volleyball.

“I would have never thought this would happen — specifically, in California and in the Bay Area,” he said, adding that he moved to the region from North Carolina.

Still, he said, the Bay Area is home.

“This is where I live and I’m going to stay here, I’m going nowhere, because I love this place, even though this lady tried to make a hateful place but she failed,” he said.

Albeshari, 31, said he’s been flooded with messages and calls of support since he posted the video.

“It’s just amazing how Americans are,” he said. “It’s overwhelming to see all that support.”

Slader told KTVU that she “wanted to tell them about Christ and that what they’re doing, what they believe in, their Allah that he was praying to right there in the park openly, is not of god, it’s of the devil.”

She said that “the self-defense part of me as a human being kicked in, and I hit the camera with my umbrella.”

A man who answered the phone at Slader’s Castro Valley home on Wednesday morning said she was not available to speak.

‘Deal with it’

“Oh well, deal with it!” he said about the woman’s comments and actions in the park encounter. “Have you been watching the news lately? Do you know whats going on? Don’t you have better things to do?”

Slader was not arrested and the case has been forwarded to the Alameda County district attorney’s office, which is considering whether to go forward with charges.

“This is a very busy, popular park in a diverse area,” Jones said. “It’s unfortunate this happened. People should be able to enjoy the park in peace. This is unfortunate especially in light of what’s happening nationally right now.”

The video comes as widely perceived anti-Muslim rhetoric has heightened in America in recent days and weeks. Earlier this week, Donald Trump, the leading Republican presidential candidate, called for a ban on Muslims coming to the United States after 14 people were killed in a terrorist attack in San Bernardino.

Texas mosque protest

In November, an armed protest was held outside of a Texas mosque following the killings of 130 people during a terrorist attack in Paris. Multiple mosques across the country have reported vandalism and threats in recent weeks, and Monday a severed pig’s head reportedly was thrown at a mosque in Philadelphia.

Arsalan Iftikhar, a legal fellow at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding and a civil rights lawyer, said the comments in the video were unacceptable.

“It is absolutely unconscionable that a government employee and state corrections department employee would yell abusive xenophobic statements at innocent American Muslims in a park,” he said. “Every American has a First Amendment right to exercise their religion without being verbally assaulted and I hope that state corrections officials will adequately reprimand this employee for her hateful language.”

Nasrina Bargzie, a national security and civil rights attorney for the Asian Law Caucus, added, “Having a hate incident like this happen in the Bay Area is a wake-up call: the hateful rhetoric against Muslims has reached a fever pitch.”

Evan Sernoffsky and Hamed Aleaziz are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers E-mail: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com, haleaziz@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky, @haleaziz