Another hate crime that is supposedly not a hate crime

Andrew Jacobs:

The police have arrested four Harlem teenagers and charged them with the robbery and murder of a New York University student who died earlier this month after he was chased onto 125th Street and hit by a car.

Although law enforcement officials had been investigating the incident as a possible bias crime, citing an anonymous witness who said he heard one of the attackers, who were black, yell, "Get the white guy," they determined that the assault on the student, Broderick J. Hehman, was instead a robbery gone awry.

Mr. Hehman, a 20-year-old junior who lived on the Upper East Side, was hit by a silver Mercedes-Benz the night of April 1 as he tried to escape five teenagers who had accosted him as he walked to a friend's apartment to play video games. He died four days later, never having regained consciousness.

Over the weekend, investigators arrested four friends who they say tried to rob Mr. Hehman and may be responsible for other street robberies in East Harlem. Authorities are still seeking the fifth attacker.

The youths, two 13-year-olds and two 15-year-olds, will be charged as adults, according to the Manhattan district attorney's office. They face nine years to life if convicted.

Based on interviews with witnesses and confessions from three of those arrested, investigators decided that bias did not play a role in the selection of Mr. Hehman as a victim, said Deputy Inspector Michael Osgood, the commanding officer of the Police Department's Hate Crimes Unit.

"The purpose was to take his money, not to assault him because of his identity," he said, adding that although one of the attackers may have used racist language during the chase, that in itself did not make the incident a bias crime. "It was a gratuitous slur," he said.

The events that led to Mr. Hehman's death began at 8:15 that Saturday night, when the youths, according to police, gathered on the corner of 126th Street and Lexington Avenue to plot a robbery. They quickly spotted their mark — another man, the police said — but backed off when a patrol car passed. A few minutes later, when Mr. Broderick emerged by the Lexington Avenue line subway station at 125th Street, the boys decided that they had found an easy target.

As part of their tactic, two of them moved in front of Mr. Hehman and three lingered behind, the police said. One block west, as he walked beneath the Metro-North Railroad tracks on Park Avenue talking on his cellphone, they made their move. After the teenagers surrounded Mr. Hehman, investigators said, one of the youths placed him in a bear hug, while another rifled through his pockets.

The police say they believe that another of the youths punched him in the face. Moments later, Mr. Hehman broke free. With his attackers shouting and in pursuit, he darted into 125th Street, heavy with traffic, and was hit by a car. The driver stopped and the youths fled. According to their own accounts, they came away with nothing.

For more than a week, the police were stymied in their investigation. On a hunch, they viewed surveillance tapes from a McDonald's on 125th Street that had been damaged by a group of teenagers eight days earlier. Although the police said that none of the arrested youths took part in that melee, some of those identified in the videos had heard about the attack on Mr. Hehman and led police to the suspects, who were taken into custody on Saturday.

Friends and relatives of the accused youths described them as well-behaved and unlikely participants in a violent assault. Rodney Jenkins, a grandfather of one of the 15-year-olds, said he spoiled his grandson so he would never be lured into the thuggery that upends the lives of so many young black men. "He has a jacket for every day of the week and stack of jeans," Mr. Jenkins said. "We do that so he won't have to go to the street to sell drugs."

Diana Fox, 23, who lives across the hall from one of the 13-year-olds, said he was a bookish boy with a stutter who once helped her rid her apartment of a rat. She said, "I can only say good things" about him.

Mr. Hehman's father and sister, stopped as they entered their building yesterday, said they did not want to talk. According to an online profile Mr. Hehman, known to his friends as J. B., was a karaoke enthusiast, a Prince fan and self-effacingly neurotic about his health. Before his death he had been awaiting word about an internship with the city's Parks and Recreation Department. One of the last papers he turned in for his major, metropolitan studies, was about urban violence.

Norman Siegel, a civil rights lawyer and former executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, expressed disappointment at the department's decision not to treat Mr. Hehman's death as a bias attack. He said he thought the police were shying away from the hate-crime designation for political reasons.

"They don't want to have increased racial tension, racial divisiveness and violence," he said. "They'd rather ignore what's painfully real, which is that there are still racial tensions in this town."

Mr. Siegel said he would ask Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney, to consider reclassifying the crime as bias-motivated. A spokeswoman for the district attorney declined to comment on the case but said it was still being investigated.

New York State's hate-crime law, passed in 2000, metes out harsher penalties for those who single out victims based on race, religion or sexual orientation.

Frederick M. Lawrence, the author of "Punishing Hate: Bias Crimes Under American Law" and the dean of George Washington University Law School, said the state's hate-crime statute places a high burden of proof on the authorities. Prosecutors have to prove what someone was thinking when they committed a crime, he said, "and that's not an easy thing to do."

Harlem thugs tied to vid

Was the murder also a hate crime?

He was 'easy mark'

A DAMNING SILENCE

'HATE' KILLED NYU KID

THEY SCREAMED: "GET WHITEY!"

The Racial Double Standard

Where’s the outrage?

Bias Crime: Black Teens Shout "Get the White Boy" in Death of NYU Student