Ugly crime called hate

Denis Hamill:

It was as plain as black and white. It was a hate crime.

When 30 black teenagers from Marine Park Middle School, most of them girls, chased five white girls from St. Edmund's off a Marine Park basketball court and across a Brooklyn street - punching, kicking, slapping, pulling hair and screaming, "honky bitches," "black power" and "white crackers" - it was a racial attack.

It was about hate.

Police officers who responded to the scene on March 30, at approximately 4 p.m., arrested five blacks. They were charged with simple assault.

Two of the white girls were treated at Coney Island Hospital. One had a broken nose and was given a CAT scan because she had been repeatedly kicked in the head. Another suffered a torn muscle and had clumps of hair ripped out of her scalp.

But it took authorities three weeks to bring in the bias crime unit to investigate and elevate the charges to hate crime status. And to arrest three more alleged culprits. And to offer a reward for information on the rest of the mob of black teens.

And now noted attorney Stephen Murphy and associate Daniel Russo have been retained by the families of the victims to initiate a civil suit against the city and the Department of Education.

Murphy was the most vocal attorney involved in one of the most celebrated hate crimes in recent history, the Howard Beach case of the mid-'80s. In that case, a gang of whites chased a group of blacks, and a young black man named Michael Griffith wound up dead.

In the racially polarizing trial that followed, only Murphy's client was acquitted.

But during that trial, Murphy learned a lot about the fast-acting poison of racism in this city. He received death threats. He was taunted by racial epithets. What few know about Murphy is that he later became friendly with Griffith's mother, Jean, who often referred clients his way. A few years after the incident, I ran into Murphy at a memorial service in Bedford-Stuyvesant for Michael Griffith.

In the years since, Murphy has had as many black clients as white, and of late he has been retained by the megastar 50 Cent to defend several of his black rapper friends in major felony cases.

"I've seen race from both sides in this city," Murphy says. "I've caught white cops lying on the stand about innocent black guys from the projects. No matter who's doing the hating, it's ugly. In this case, it's clear these five white girls were singled out because of the color of their skin, and the police brass at the 63rd Precinct ignored all the evidence."

Says Russo: "We're investigating whether the Marine Park Middle School followed the proper guidelines of the rules of dismissal of their students that day. And the city didn't offer protection in the park, where not a single cop was on duty that day."

Joanne Eisen, mother of one of the victims, is a social worker who works in the criminal justice system.

"My job as a social worker is to protect people from discrimination, oppression and poverty," she says. "But now my own child is the victim of discrimination and racism, and I want those responsible to know there are consequences. After this happened, it took a bunch of the moms two full weeks to even get an audience with Deputy Inspector Kevin McGinn at the 63rd Precinct. But no matter what we told him, no matter how much eyewitness evidence we presented, he said he would not elevate these charges to racial hate crime status."

But the mothers refused to stop there. They contacted local officials. They spoke to local papers. One mother handed Mayor Bloomberg a flyer at a campaign appearance.

Unknown to McGinn or the parents, however, detectives from the bias crime unit had begun an investigation of the attack on April 1. Three more arrests were made and the charges were upgraded to hate crimes by the city's corporation counsel at the arraignment.

Five cops and a sergeant were permanently assigned to patrol the park.

"I'm just saddened that in 2005 we're still wrestling with this kind of hate in this city," Murphy says. "After 9/11, I hoped the city would remain united because people of every race, religion and creed were victims that day.

"We have New Yorkers of every race serving in Iraq. I refuse to be a lightning rod for racism in this city. But to me, the worst form of racism is the kind where you see the obvious and say, 'Oh, well, because they're black we're not going to hold them to the same standard of behavior.' That's double racism. That's what the 63rd Precinct did here. That's what the corporation counsel promises has been corrected. We'll see."

It still saddens me how little coverage this story has received from the mainstream media. After all, if the perpetrators had been white and the victims black you can bet that the MSM - along with Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson - would still be talking about this story.