Results tagged “hatecrime”

Hate crime task force detectives Stephon Garland and Gregory Wilson, who are black, and detective Faisal Khan, who is Pakistani, were going door-to-door in Gravesend, Brooklyn, canvassing residents to investigate a possible hate crime. They were each wearing suits, and soon enough 15 members of the Shomrim Jewish Community patrol pulled up, accusing them of impersonating police officers. Things got heated, and white uniformed cops from the 61st Precinct arrived at the scene to handle the situation. And handle it they did!

Yesterday, hundreds of people gathered in College Point, Queens to protest the brutal attack that left a 49-year-old gay man clinging to life. Jack Price had been walking home on October 8 when he was savagely beaten—broken jaw, broken ribs, collapsed lung— by two men who called him gay slurs. Price's brother told the Daily News, "Nobody should have to worry about looking behind their backs. Parents have to teach their kids. They learn hatred and all that stuff at home."

The Queens gay man who was nearly beaten to death spoke out about the brutal attack for the first time yesterday. Jack Price, 49, who is still in the hospital recovering from multiple injuries, told the Daily News, "I thought I died. I was bleeding all over the place."

Initial reports about the brutal beating of an openly gay Queens man Friday night (video) mentioned that one of the alleged assailants told the victim, "My father is a C.O. [correction officer]. You will never do anything to us." That stupid boast had been unsubstantiated, until now. Last night the father of Daniel Rodriguez, the second man arrested in the alleged hate crime against Jack Price, came forward to speak to reporters.

A Mexican day laborer is hospitalized with brain damage after being attacked somewhere in Williamsburg or Bushwick by three black men shouting "wetback." Mario Vera was riding his bike back home to Bushwick with groceries from a lower Manhattan food pantry when the young men hit him in the back of his head "with something hard" while yelling anti-immigrant slurs. The assault happened on September 23rd, but wasn't reported until last Friday, because Vera is an undocumented immigrant afraid to go to the police. (NYPD policy prohibits officers from sharing law-abiding immigrants' status with the Feds, but it has been known to happen.)

The second man accused of beating an openly gay man in Queens Friday morning was been returned to NYC last night, after being arrested in Norfolk, Virginia, late Tuesday. But the sister of suspect Daniel Rodriguez, 21, insists her brother did not commit a hate crime—because he has gay relatives and even once had a homosexual roommate. Christina Rodriguez tells the Daily News, "This wasn't a hate crime. If he's guilty of anything, he'll man up to it." Rodriguez's brother Eddie also vouched for him.

A merchants' association in College Point, Queens recently installed a number of security cameras in the neighborhood to deter graffiti. Early Friday morning, one of those cameras captured in vivid detail the shocking assault on openly gay local Jack Price, 49, who was leaving a 24-hour deli. The attack left him in a medically induced coma with collapsed lungs, broken ribs, damaged spleen, and a metal plate in his jaw. This video shows how it happened, but be warned: It is extremely disturbing.

Police have identified the second suspect in the savage beating of an openly gay Queens man who is still in grave condition after the Friday morning attack. On Sunday police arrested 26-year-old Daniel Aleman and charged him with assault and aggravated assault as a hate crime; they say the second assailant is Daniel Rodriguez, 21, of College Point, Queens. The victim, 49-year-old Jack Price, was leaving a 24-hour deli in College Point around 3 a.m. Friday when he was attacked by two men who allegedly screamed anti-gay slurs during the assault. He's in a medically-induced coma.

LGBTQ advocates are pushing the state legislature to amend New York's hate crime law to include gender identity. Under the current state law, prosecuters can classify assault as a hate crime if it stems from the victims' sexual orientation, but crimes against transgender victims do not necessarily qualify. One of the leading advocates for reform is Carmella Etienne, 23, who was attacked in Queens in July by two men shouting anti-gay slurs and threatening to cut her throat.

An openly-gay Queens man is in a medically-induced coma after a brutal Friday morning beating which police are investigating as a hate crime. 49-year-old Jack Price was leaving a 24-hour deli in College Point around 3 a.m. when he was attacked by two men who allegedly screamed anti-gay slurs during the assault. Yesterday police arrested 26-year-old Daniel Aleman and have charged him with assault and aggravated assault as a hate crime; the second suspect remains at large.

Around 2 a.m. on Tuesday, Lenny Speregen awoke to the sound of rocks and eggs being thrown at his house in Windsor Terrace; witnesses say the thugs, who escaped, where shouting anti-Semitic slurs. Speregen is a professional diver who recently shared stories about all the weird stuff he's seen in the city's rivers. He tells the Daily News, "This came out of left field. I feel 40% anger and 60% fear. My family lives here." Seriously, WTF, Brooklyn?

The NYPD Hate Crime unit is investigating the latest in a series of incidents wherein Brooklyn sidewalks have been strewn with "Kill Jews" notes. The anti-Semitic notes previously appeared in Boerum Hill and Clinton Hill earlier this month; now they've turned up in Bay Ridge. Yesterday morning, residents along Third Avenue discovered the sidewalk littered with hundreds of two-inch pieces of paper with "Kill Jews" written in black marker.

Following a Friday night attack outside of McCoy's bar in Hell's Kitchen, where a group of gay men were called "faggots" prior to being physically assaulted, pressure continues to be put on the NYPD for their alleged negligence in the situation.

Yesterday we reported on an anti-gay attack that occurred in Hell's Kitchen this past Friday night. WPLJ DJ Blake Hayes (pictured), cabaret and Broadway performer Danny Calvert, and another friend were attacked by a patron of McCoy's bar; they claim the police officers who showed up refused to take their attacker's information, or let them file a claim. They also expressed concern that McCoy's bouncer (who stopped the attack) allowed the attacker back into the bar.

This past Friday night, WPLJ DJ Blake Hayes, cabaret and Broadway performer Danny Calvert and another friend were walking down 9th Avenue in Hell's Kitchen when a cigarette butt was thrown at them by a man outside of McCoy's bar, followed by the words, "Keep moving, faggot."

How did Brooklyn Heights ring in the Jewish New Year? With swastikas painted inside the First Unitarian Universalist Church on Monroe Street. Sigh. Police said there were also “very inappropriate statements," but did not get more specific. [BHB]

The gang of young men who were so incensed by last year's victory for President Obama that they "decided to go after black people" were sentenced today for their two separate Election Night attacks. The four Staten Islanders, known as the Rosebank Krew will now spend the four years of Obama's term behind bars. Three of them received sentences hovering around five years and one got a stiffer nine years for beating up a 17-year-old Liberian immigrant and putting a white man they believed to be black in a coma for weeks after running over him with a car. 19-year-old Ralph Nicoletti (pictured) received the 9-year sentence; he has had a rap sheet since he was 14 and at one point point attacked Michael Contreras because he thought Contreras was the snitch. (Nicoletti said he had become "upset" because Contreras repeatedly tried to sell him drugs.) Nicoletti believed he deserved a lighter sentence for cooperating, but a judge disagreed, saying his crimes were "perpetrated by pure hate that was born out of ignorance."

Police are investigating whether a robbery in the town of Patchogue over the weekend was another instance of a hate crime in the town where an Ecuadorian immigrant was allegedly murdered by a group of teenagers last November. The Hispanic man was walking on a street in the Long Island town just before midnight on Friday night when he was approached by three young white men. As they knocked him to the ground while stealing cash and other items, police say that "disparaging remarks were made about the victim's ancestry." Patchogue Mayor Paul Pontieri told reporters, "It's distressing that it happened at all. Who knows why and who knows the circumstances? I don't know yet." After a group of teens were charged in the beating death of Ecuadorian immigrant Marcelo Lucero (pictured), the Justice Department launched an investigation into accusations that Hispanic immigrants were being terrorized in the town for months. Some said that the victims' pleas had originally fallen on deaf ears with Suffolk County police.

A 19-year-old Upper East Sider has been arrested in connection with three anti-gay attacks that took place in the neighborhood, two of which drew headlines for occurring during the recent Pride weekend. Driton Nicaj was charged with aggravated harassment and robbery as hate crimes after being picked up near his home on East 84th Street. Police say that Nicaj has confessed to one of the robberies and admitted to being a witness on-hand during the mugging of Joseph Holladay (pictured), the former Village Voice staffer who was mugged and called a faggot by a group of teens while he was down from Boston during Pride weekend.

Two men have been arraigned on charges of assault as a hate crime after an alleged rock-throwing attack on a transgender female in Queens on Wednesday night. Carmella Etienne, 22, says she walking by the corner of 116th Avenue and 199th Street in St. Albans when two men shouted anti-gay slurs and threatened to cut her throat. (NY1 reports they even threatened to sodomize her with a baseball bat.) After promising to call the police, the two suspects allegedly said, "The police don't care about you, they won't do anything to us." Rocks and a bottle were thrown, and Etienne sustained a deep cut to her leg.

Another reported attack on the Upper East Side from Sunday suggests there was possibly a mini crime spree in the fancy neighborhood this past weekend. In this incident, two men jumped 40-year-old Michael Doane on his walk home from the subway across East 84th Street at 3:20 a.m. and left him with two skull fractures and a broken nose. That places the incident just blocks away from the gay-bashing attack on Joseph Holladay almost exactly 24-hours earlier. Police said they were unsure if the new report was a bias crime or even related. A report released today from the the NY Anti-Violence Project showed that there were 12% fewer anti-gay incidents in 2008 versus '07, but their severity worsened as a whole. A spokeswoman said, “While fewer people may be beaten, they are beaten more violently." She also connected motivation for attacks to policies such as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." As for Holladay, he is recovering from the bloody beating and about to return home to Boston.

Cops who arrested three people—two women and one man—for assaulting a woman in Mastic Beach say that the trio "made numerous anti-gay remarks about the victim's sexual orientation." According to Newsday, Nora Mitzner (pictured), Lindsay McBeth, and Selwyn Icangelo repeatedly kicked, hit and pushed the female victim last night; the victim's injuries did not require hospitalization. The three were charged with aggravated harassment and the incident was reported to the U.S. Department of Criminal Justice. Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy said, "In Suffolk County, we stand united in denouncing violent and abusive acts against a person because of their race, creed, ethnicity or sexual orientation." Last year, a Ecuadorian immigrant was killed in Suffolk County during an apparent hate crime spree by teens.

A former Village Voice staffer in town for the weekend, was jumped, badly beaten and called a faggot by a group of young men on the Upper East Side in the wee hours of Saturday morning. 36-year-old Joe Holladay of Boston was smoking outside the friend's apartment on East 85th near York around 4 a.m. Saturday when the group of five or six men came up to him and hit him with an object, possibly the butt of a gun. Holladay told the Voice, "It's very blurry. But yeah, they said 'faggot.' And the next thing I know I'm in the hospital." A neighbor said they spotted a group of young white men with crewcuts, wearing wife beaters and smoking pot nearby before the attack. It's believed that they hopped in a gold Subaru older model station wagon after the attack. Upon reading about the incident, State Senator Thomas Duane got involved with the possibility of pursuing it as a hate crime and said, "Hate and prejudice of any kind are unacceptable in New York City or anywhere and there is a heightened injustice that this apparently anti-gay incident occurred during Pride Week."

Two more teens were charged in connection to the robbery and fatal strangulation of a Chinese newspaper executive in Queens. According to the Daily News, "Jay-Quel Merkerson and Bryce Newton, both 16, were hit with various counts after both were spotted in David Kao's stolen Lexis SUV after he was slain"—Merkerson for possession of stolen property and Newton for unlawful use of a stolen vehicle. The Post says that a 15-year-old was also charged with possession of stolen property. Currently, Corey Azor, 16, and Chris Levy, 17, were charged with Kao's murder and are being held without bail. Azor and Levy, along with a third teen Keron Wiltshire (who was charged with possession of stolen property—Kao's SUV), allegedly attacked and robbed another Asian man in May; Queens DA Richard Brown said, "While all three defendants are accused of preying on Asian men to rob, two of the defendants are charged with a senseless and brutal crime that, by their own alleged actions, shows a complete disregard for human life. This case will be vigorously prosecuted.”

After yesterday's shooting at the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. that left a security guard dead and the shooter (apparently an 88-year-old white supremacist) wounded, the NYPD has increased security at almost 60 Jewish sites in the city. Bomb sniffing dogs were seen at the Jewish Museum and uniformed cops were stationed outside the Museum of Jewish Heritage right after the D.C. shooting. The NYPD told the Daily News, "We adjust our counterterrorism resources on a daily basis depending on events around the world." David Norwell of the Museum of Jewish Heritage told WCBS 2, "The incident in Washington, ignorance dominates."

Responding to questions about a dramatic increase in violent assaults downtown, NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly told reporters yesterday that police are "aggressively investigating" the crime wave, while acknowledging that "there also has been a bit of a hate crimes element in some of those crimes, so our Hate Crimes Task Force is doing an investigation." But Kelly also stressed that "the rise in those assaults we believe emanated from clubs," and that insisted that overall crime is down in the Village. The remarks came after a City Council budget hearing, during which he warned that the impending $20 million in NYPD budget cuts could mean less cops on the street, because the department will have to fire 395 civilian administrative aides who type and file reports. At first they'll be replaced with cops on restricted duty, but Kelly predicts that officers will eventually be pulled off patrol to help with paperwork. The police force is already down to 35,571 cops, from 40,000 in 2001, and one source points out the obvious to the Daily News: "Anyone pulled in to type is a dead waste of people."

More details have emerged on last night's brutal beating that landed a 50-year-old man in critical condition at St. Vincent's Hospital. Police sources say the attack may have been unprovoked and believe Allen Williams of Buffalo was hailing a cab in the West Village around 2 a.m. when he was beaten by strangers who thought he was gay.

One of the Staten Island teenagers convicted on charges from a series of Election Night racially-motivated attacks hasn't been able to keep his nose clean while awaiting sentencing for the federal hate crime. Troubled teen Bryan Garaventa was arrested again yesterday after freaking out on an ex-girlfriend. Garaventa allegedly went into a jealous rage Tuesday night after seeing his ex with another male and took it out on her car, punching the windshield and kicking the door. The eighteen-year-old then left ten late night messages over the course of an hour, threatening to blow up her car and kick her front door in if she didn't pick up. He's now been charged with third-degree criminal mischief, third-degree menacing, third-degree unauthorized use of a vehicle, fourth-degree stalking and two counts of second-degree aggravated harassment. A law enforcement official told the SI Advance, "If you wanted to find a way to piss off your sentencing judge, this guy's done it in spades. There's probably no better way."

After initially being charged with reckless endangerment as a hate crime, a Staten Island man will only face misdemeanor charges for calling 911 last week with multiple false claims of attacking Mexicans. 44-year-old Michael Franklin was arrested after calling 911 on 5 separate occasions and saying things such as that he "killed two Mexicans and will kill more," that he "is riding around all day looking for more Mexicans" and that he "just hit a Mexican in the head with a baseball bat and threw him in the weeds." A spokesman for the DA's office says that the original hate crime charges were downgraded because the calls don't fall under the state's list of specified offenses for a hate crime. Franklin's only charges now will be for third-degree falsely reporting an incident and second-degree obstruction of governmental administration. After being arrested, he allegedly told police, "I'm an American citizen. The Mexicans are here illegally. They get work. I don't get work."

Keith Phoenix, who was charged with killing an Ecuadorian immigrant last December, has given an interview from Rikers Island to the Daily News. He told the paper, "I'm not a killer. I never expected anyone to die."