By Thomas Tracy By Stephen Witt
Children may be the future, but it may be a future filled with racial hate, mistrust and violence. That’s what a collection of borough religious leaders were warned of last week during a special roundtable discussion about hate crimes at Kings County Supreme Court. “We are noticing that an alarming number of [hate crimes] are being committed by juveniles,” said Charles Guria, chief of the Civil Rights and Police Integrity Bureau of the Kings County District Attorney’s office. “We hear about a case and we think that it will be coming to us, but the case is instead sent to Family Court because juveniles are sent to Family Court and the lawyers that handle these cases are members of the city’s Corporation Counsel.” According to officials, up to six of the major bias crimes in the borough last year were committed by juveniles. In the latest headline-grabbing incident, which happened in September, four black youths ranging in age from 11 to 15 attacked a 12-year-old white child on the 6500 block of Veterans Avenue in Bergen Beach, knocking him to the ground and taking his cell phone. During the robbery, police said that the suspects called the victim a “cracker” as they robbed him. The pre-teen thieves were rounded up and arrested on Monday, October 3, charged with robbery and aggravated harassment as a hate crime. The 15-year-old suspect was arrested a few hours later. So far, the worst juvenile hate crime was in Marine Park last spring, where a group of young teens were arrested for attacking for white girls over the use of a basketball court. As of this writing, that case was still to be adjudicated in Family Court. According to recent statistics, 75 percent of the suspects arrested for hate crimes are males between 16 and 21 years old, said members of the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force, although last year saw an odd increase in the number of juvenile suspects. Guria said that officials from the Kings County District Attorney’s Office are already trying to get to the students to explain what bias crimes are and the consequences of those who use “hate speak.” “We are trying to get to them before some hard-core hate sets in,” said Guria, who added that hate-mongers are actively trying to get their message out to younger and younger children. “We’re trying to keep [kids] from going down the wrong path.” “We’ve even found a website in Staten Island that is designed to preach hate to young white girls,” he said. “Whoever is putting out the website is doing so in the hopes of influencing young white girls who would then influence their children.” Joining Guria at the Roundtable Discussion on Hate Crimes was Deputy Inspector Michael Osgood, the commanding officer of the NYPD’s Hate Crime Task Force, who said that bias or hate crimes in the city have dropped by 50 percent since the creation of the Task Force in 2000. Still, someone who commits a true hate crime does not just want to infuriate his intended victim, but the entire community, he said. “In a hate crime, an entire group is victimized,” said Osgood. “There is heightened emotion…a heightened sense of anger. That’s why we have a special hate crimes unit to catch these bad guys.” Osgood said that citywide, 239 crimes were investigated by the NYPD Hate Crime Task Force – an eight percent drop from the 267 reported in 2004. The 2004 number is five percent less than the number of hate crimes logged with the NYPD in 2003, he said. In Brooklyn, there were 99 hate crimes reported to authorities last year — just one less than the 100 the NYPD investigated in 2004. Of the 99 hate crimes that occurred, 34 were considered anti-Semitic, 12 were anti-black and seven were catalogued as anti-white. Fourteen of the hate crimes were sparked by a bias against the victim’s sexual preference, said Osgood. Each of the bias crimes investigated had to pass a litmus test, said Osgood. Each complaint is scrutinized to see if the action taken was in fact a crime, if there is evidence that proves that the crime was racially motivated and, most importantly, if the victim’s identity was the main reason why the crime was committed. “It’s very rare that a person’s hate or prejudice against another person rises to the level of criminality,” said Osgood. “We have a city of eight million people, but we only had 287 bias crimes reported last year. More people bump into each other in the street every minute of every day,” Osgood said that the low number of bias crimes “shows that most people are very respectful to each other.” The discussion, sponsored by the Kings County Supreme Court, was designed to help Brooklyn religious leaders learn more about the investigation and prosecution of hate crimes in New York City. Two sharp-eyed and quick-thinking cops nabbed a couple of perpetrators, a loaded .38-caliber revolver and a kilo of heroin off the streets of Flatbush. And the bravery also netted Police Officer Mike Gaynor and Lt Gerard Hirschfield November “Cops of the Month” award at the recent 70th Precinct Community Council meeting. The events of the bust unfolded November 10, when Gaynor and Hirshfield were on patrol and spotted the two men dart out of 985 Ocean Avenue. They immediately recognized the bulge in the jacket side of one of the suspects as a possible firearm. “I saw them run toward the cab and that’s what got my attention,” recalled Gaynor. “He was getting the hell out of wherever he was.” The two officers went around a parked truck and approached the suspects, and upon frisking one, found the loaded firearm, Hirshfield recalled. “The other tried to push a bag under the seat of the cab and when he pulled it out he said it was, ‘pasteles’ [a Hispanic food], and it was, but in the bag was also a package wrapped with duct tape,” he said. The two officers knew right away it was some kind of illegal drug, but were a little shocked to find out it was a kilo of heroin. “I was 100 percent shocked it was heroin. Even the narcotics guys were amazed by it,” said Gaynor, who has been a cop at the 70th Precinct for four years and has received several other “Cop of the Month” awards. “Heroin is not big in the neighborhood. I come across it from time to time, but this was unusual. Probably a deal went down in some apartment over there,” he said. Hirshfield, a 13-year veteran, said it was his first “Cop of the Month” award in the 70th Precinct, but he has won the awards before working in precincts in Harlem and Queens. “I always wanted to be a cop since I was young,” said Hirshfield. “My great-grandfather was a cop in the 40’s.” Earning “Cop of the Month” awards for December were police officers Germaine Clarke of the community policing unit, and Joe Longardino and Brian Risano of the robbery unit. The three responded to a robbery in process call at 591 Ocean Avenue. When they arrived, Longardino and Risano went up two separate sets of stairs while Clarke covered the lobby. The two cops who went up the stairs were able to nab one of the two robbery suspects, but the other darted back down the stairs, where Clarke spotted a firearm in the suspect’s waistband and thus pulled out his own firearm, and ordered the perpetrator to stop. The suspect darted back up the stairs where he was tackled by the officers and arrested. Recovered at the scene was a loaded firearm. Clarke said his police training came into effect during the bust and he didn’t have time to feel scared. However, after these incidents you think about it, he said. “My favorite thing about being a cop is it’s like a movie,” said Clarke, who was born, raised and still lives in Brooklyn. “I’m the first responder to everything. It’s like being in a movie. I get the front seat. That’s what I like most,” he added. Clarke, whose beat includes the Flatbush BID (Business Improvement Area), said the biggest fallacy about his job is that some think police harass people too much when they are only doing their job. “Like sometimes I patrol the [Prospect Park] Parade Grounds, and have to make sure everyone has the right fields and make sure everything is going smooth,” he said.
