By Thomas Tracy
Three more teens have been reportedly added to a growing list of suspects charged in a brutal bias attack in Marine Park earlier this year, according to police and published reports. As of this writing, eight students, five girls and three boys, will be defending their actions in Family Court, charged with assault under the state’s hate crime statutes. Witnesses to the March 30 brawl told police that four to six girls on Easter vacation from St. Edmund’s parochial school, who are all white, were playing hoops that afternoon when students leaving Marine Park Junior High School interrupted them. All of the students who interrupted them were black, officials said. When the students were told that they could have the court when the St. Edmund’s girls were finished, the teens left and came back in greater numbers, allegedly screaming “Black Power,” “Martin Luther King” and calling their victims “White Crackers,” the victims’ parents told police. Parents of the victims said that their daughters were beaten, kicked and chased out of the park. One of the girls reportedly ran out of the park and scrambled to a home across the street for help, but a group of assailants grabbed hold of her and pulled her back into the park by her hair, parents said. Cops from the 63rd Precinct arrested five girls, charging them with assault. Sources said that the charges were increased after the children were re-interviewed, following multiple requests by the victims’ parents, who demanded that the attack should be investigated as a bias crime. According to published reports, three boys, including the alleged “ring leader,” were taken into custody last week. At least one of the three teens was arrested at Marine Park Junior High School, which stands just outside Marine Park on Stuart Street. The would-be “ring leader” is described only as a 14-year-old boy. Police said that the teen was taken into custody on May 5. The exact charges against him weren’t available as this paper went to press. Two other teenage males, both 13, were taken into custody earlier in the week, charged with menacing, assault and rioting as a hate crime, officials said. During previous court proceedings, the five girls initially arrested were given a chance to plead guilty to the attack. If they did so, they could each be sent to a juvenile detention facility for up to 18 months. In light of the March 30 attack, the NYPD has added more patrols to Marine Park, a park that residents repeatedly claimed had “fallen through the cracks” before the bias attack put it in the spotlight. Deputy Inspector Kevin McGinn, the commanding officer of the 63rd Precinct, said that the new command post, comprising of five officers and one sergeant, has been successful in keeping crime down in the area as well, as, more importantly, making the residents feel safer. The new officers are stationed at the Marine Park park house at the corner of Marine Parkway and Fillmore Avenue, patrolling the area daily from 9:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. “This year we’ve only had one report of a major crime in the park, and that was the attack at the basketball courts,” said McGinn. “But to many people, parks are sacred places. They want a sense of safety when they go into them.”
