As the immigrant population on Long Island has increased over the past two decades, so has racial tension and hate crimes.
In 2004, 15 cases of hate crimes were reported against Latinos in Suffolk County, according to statistics of the Hate Crimes Unit of the Suffolk Police Department. In the 4 years that followed, including 2008, the complaints were reduced to slightly less than half. In 2009, 12 crimes were reported. And this year, until September, 10 were the alleged crimes.
Domingo Nabor, a Mexican undocumented immigrant from Riverhead, reported to police that he was the victim of an attack in which two black people stole and cut off part of his lower lip.
“’Mexican, give me your …. money,’ one of them told me,” says Nabor. “I have no money,” he said, ‘Oh do not you have any money? Let me see it.’ “It was dark and one of them grabbed me and had a knife or something. The last thing I remember is a very strong pain.”
“I think they [reported hate crime numbers] reflect reality to an extent because you obviously see an increase. So, that’s clear. How accurate these numbers are is questionable,” said Renee Ortiz, the Chief Deputy Clerk of Suffolk County Legislature and a member of the Hate Crime Task Force Committee. “I think that there are some questions as what they [numbers] are accounting. If they are accounting actual reported incidents, if they are accounting only incidents where there were actual charges filed.”
Racial violence peaked in Suffolk County with the murder of Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorian immigrant, killed by seven teenagers between 16 and 17 years old on November 2, 2008, in Patchogue.
Just weeks after the second anniversary of Lucero’s death, Luis Almonte, the administrator of Lucero’s estate, has filed a $40 million lawsuit accusing Suffolk County, its Police Department, the town of Brookhaven and the village of Patchogue for violating Lucero’s civil rights and failing to protect Hispanics in the same manner that they had protected the whites.
“The seven young men who killed Lucero themselves reported being involved in at least 27 attacks against Latinos prior to Lucero,” says Luis Valenzuela, the Executive director of Long Island Immigrant Alliance. “So, it quickly dispels the myth that there were only 8, only 6 hate crimes when these young men are admitting to so many.”
Before Lucero’s death, the statements of some public officials, along with some policies that they were trying to push, were creating a very negative environment towards immigrants and the Latino community. But now she says things are changing.
“I think the Legislature has taken a different path and they are looking differently at it. And I think they are recognizing that they have to be careful even in the laws they pass and how they are perceived,” Ortiz said.
Of the nearly 462,000 foreigners in Long Island, about 161,000 are Latinos born in Latin America and about 189,000 are of Hispanic origin but were born in this country, according to census figures analyzed by the Fiscal Policy Institute, a think tank organization in New York.
“There’s big numbers [immigrants], so we get panicky because we look at the numbers and say ‘there are more of them than us, what are we going to do?’” said Sister Margaret Smyth, who works for the North Fork Hispanic Apostolate and sees more than 30 undocumented immigrants a day in her Riverhead office. “So, we have to find a way to get rid of the ‘them’. Maybe we need to deport them, maybe we need to make it hard for them to live here.”
It is very hard to report a hate crime because for a long time authorities didn’t accept reports and nobody knew how to describe it, according to Sister Margaret. But now, she says, more people are reporting them and it’s not so much the number as the fact that the police are now naming it a hate crime.
“How do you explain that people would say to me, and see this would never get reported, that when they walk the streets, Americans and people have spit at them. Isn’t that a hate crime?” added Sister Margaret.
The Hispanic community felt and continues to feel afraid to report crimes against them because of the consequences of reporting and perhaps the authorities were misclassifying or minimizing the reports that were made, according to Valenzuela.
“We have deployed more police patrols in the communities, we have provided courses in Spanish crime prevention and safety seminars in different cities,” said Christopher Bergold, a spokesman for the Office of the Commissioner of the Suffolk County Police. “We believe these measures have resulted in a significant impact.”
Romulo Guerron, an Ecuadorian undocumented immigrant of Patchogue, says that even though he trusts police, he fears that what happened to Marcelo Lucero could happen again
“I don’t go out as much as I used to or I don’t stay in the streets that much. My friends and I hang out in my place,” said Guerron. “I avoid going out much. I don’t want to have problems.”
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