Dan's Papers - January 30, 2009

Southampton Town has made the incredible decision to refer all hate crimes that are reported in that Town to the Suffolk County Police for disposition.

At the present time, all of the other police departments on the east end, Southold, Riverhead, Sag Harbor Village, East Hampton Town and Village and Southampton Village, all continue to handle their own hate crime reports, calling in the County only in extreme circumstances and even then still retaining the lead role in those cases.

How this will turn out for Southampton Town I do not know. But I suspect it will result in a dramatic "drop" in hate crimes in that community, because "drop the folder in the trash" seems to be the order of the day for the Suffolk County Police when the matter involves bigoted whites and either legal or illegal Hispanic victims.

Having made the decision to ship all hate crime reports to the County, Southampton Town will now be able to report about the plummet in hate crimes in the town. And they can urge other east end communities to abandon investigating local hate crimes too. The County Police havereported that they had exactly one complaint of a hate crime against Hispanics all last year. This has earned them a State Investigation about their practices.

A good example of how Suffolk County handles hate crime involves the murder two months ago of an Ecuadorian national named Marcelo Lucero. It was no big deal, according to County Executive Steve Levy. "If it happened in Nassau County," he said when it was making headline news, "it would be a one day news story."

Here is what happened that night.

When it gets dark in and around Patchogue, Bay Shore and Sayville, where a lot of this stuff seems to be going on in the county, the local young white kids and other bigots go out and beat up Hispanics for fun.

The murder happened seven weeks ago. A group of six teenagers went out to "Get a Mexican," as they refer to what they intend to do when they come upon south-of the-border people. The phrase "Get a Mexican" is popular in the high school. It was a Saturday night. Downtown Patchogue is not well lit. In a parking lot, they found two "Mexicans," actually Ecuadorians and brothers, who they taunted and then attacked with knives. One got away and ran to tell the police who were a few blocks away. The other, Marcelo Lucero of Ecuador, died in the parking lot from the wounds.

Unfortunately, this happened on a night when Patchogue Village Officials were not out hoping to prevent trouble. Concerned about how the County Police are "policing" their town, and without a police department of their own, they have heard about so many hate crime calls to the police that go uninvestigated that these officials sometimes go out at night to stand in parking lots, armed only with cell phones, hoping to help.

They missed this one. It might have saved a life.

A generation ago, every town and village in Suffolk County had its own police force. The County had its own too. And then one day, it was suggested as an economy measure that the County drop its local police forces and just accept a very expanded and up-to-date County Police Force to take things over.

The six western towns in the county, which have about two million people in them, agreed to this. Today there are only isolated police forces in the western and central parts of the county, usually at villages that are not much bigger than private communities. And the Suffolk County police are welcome in.

Here on the East End, however, the five towns, Riverhead, Southold, Southampton, East Hampton and Shelter Island, refused to go along with this. They said that though the five eastern towns comprise half the county, they had only about 150,000 residents in them. In a rural area, it would be better to have local police.

Later, about 10 years ago, the Suffolk County Police were actually banned from policing the five eastern towns. They could still be called in to either assist or handle murders or other serious crimes beyond the ability of the local police. But other than that, no thanks. I think the defining moment took place when, as I recall, some County Police were seen up near the Montauk Dock Restaurant letting the air out of the tires of a particular fisherman they did not like having drinks there.

We say "Good luck" to Southampton Town with their bias crime control decision. It seems to me it could not have been a worse decision under the circumstances.

In another piece of news this week, some of the legislators in Suffolk County, alarmed at the drift of events in the county, have introduced a bill to be called "Marcelo Lucero's Law."

Introduced by Wayne Horsley (D-Babylon) an DuWayne Gregory (D-Amityville) the bill will strengthen the county's hate crime law.

If this bill passes and County Executive Levy signs it, those convicted of hate crimes in the county would, upon repeat convictions, receive ever escalating fines. First, second and third offenses would get fines of $1,000, $2,000 and $5,000 respectively. After that, the fines would be $10,000 and $20,000.

The money raised from these fines will be earmarked to fund the Suffolk County Junior Human Rights Commission Day, a day in high schools dedicated to the fighting of anti-bias crime.

In the press release announcing the introduction of this bill, there was no comment one way or another from County Executive Steve Levy.