Another Hate Crime And More Missing Media

This is maddening. Right here in NYC, on September 11, 2007, members of a Manhattan Community College basketball team were attacked as they walked by the Patriot Saloon on Chambers Street in lower Manhattan, near City Hall. They were called racial epithets and told, "this is what slavery feels like," but kept walking. Their attackers followed them, beat them, and then beat the team's coaches when they tried to intervene.

Can you guess who ended up getting arrested when the cops arrived? Of course it was the black victims.

Other than the NYDailyNews story linked above, I only see a tiny story at ABC7 Online. I hadn't heard anything about this story until this morning while I was mining through my site's traffic.

How is this not major news? I suspect it's for the same reasons that the unjustified tasering of an African American in Harlem wasn't newsworthy while so many other cops-gone-wild-with-taser stories were. NY is so often billed as a large and wonderful progressive melting pot. That's not what I've seen in my ~3 years living here.

Here's a good chunk of the story from the NYDailyNews:

Two coaches and several players of the Manhattan Community College basketball team say they were the targets of separate racial bias attacks and robberies near City Hall.

They say it happened last week, the attacks were carried out by the same group of white men - and the NYPD has failed to properly investigate. ...

The first incident erupted around 8:30 p.m. on Sept. 11 outside the Patriot, a notoriously rowdy Chambers St. bar, as members of the Manhattan team were walking to the A subway station on Church St. after four hours of basketball practice at the school.

Several players told the Daily News a group of white men standing across Chambers St. outside the bar started yelling "n-----s" and "this is what slavery feels like." One of the men, they said, then threw a bottle at them.

"We kept walking to the station, and when we look back a group of six of the white men had run up behind us and were attacking us," said team member Marquis Scott, 18, the son of an NYPD cop.

Scott says he was knocked down and dragged into the middle of Chambers St., where four of the assailants started to stomp and pummel him.

When police arrived at the scene they immediately handcuffed Scott and charged him with misdemeanor assault while letting his assailants go, he said.

"The first cop who got there, a female, had to tackle two of the guys to get them off me," Scott said. "I'm the victim but then somehow I end up getting arrested."

The official police report said Scott "was observed fighting and punching along with unapprehended others" and "causing a physical injury to the forehead" of a white male named Labinot Rexhaj.

Mapp did not witness the first outbreak. He was still a few blocks away getting ready to leave the school when one of his players called his cell phone for help. He ran to the scene with an assistant coach and found Scott in handcuffs.

"They [the cops] wouldn't give us any information," Mapp said. "They just put him in a police car and drove away."

Once the police left, Mapp headed east on Chambers St. to find the rest of his players and make sure they were okay. He found four of them standing on Broadway near City Hall, where they had run to get away from men at the bar. "I told my kids to go downstairs to the Brooklyn Bridge train station, because there's usually police down there," Mapp said.

As he descended the stairs and started to swipe his MetroCard in the turnstile, Mapp heard rumbling behind him.

"I see four white men jump over the turnstiles and they start to attack my kids," he said. "Then four more of them rush in. They're all yelling 'N---er time,' and 'N---ers, we're gonna get you.'"

Mapp, who recently had hip replacement surgery, yelled to the token booth clerk to call police, then rushed to intercede. He said he was knocked to the ground, surrounded by several of the men and beaten.

By the time transit cops arrived, the assailants had fled, taking Mapp's wallet with $100, and the book bags of two of his players.

Mapp told cops what happened and accompanied two officers in a patrol car around the neighborhood. Within a few minutes, they spotted three of the attackers near Pace University. One of the men was still holding one of the stolen book bags with a paycheck inside belonging to one of Mapp's players.

Cops charged the three men, Visar Halili, 22, and Dardan Rexhaj, 22, both from Manhattan, and Sammy Othman, 21, from Brooklyn, with misdemeanor assault. Halili also was charged with criminal possession of stolen property.

Mapp is furious that not one police report for either incident mentions them as racially biased, and that reports of the train station melee list only one of his players, Travis Johnson, as a victim.

Police say they have no information of any bias connected to these incidents.

"It is outrageous and beyond belief that these young basketball players and their coach were victims of a hate crime, and the NYPD is sweeping it under the rug and refusing to charge this as a felony," said Bonita Zelman, lawyer for Marquis Scott, who filed a victim complaint the same night of the attack.

"My players were traumatized by this, I was knocked down, beaten and have an EMS report to prove it, and somehow the police put me down as a witness," Mapp said. "I don't understand this."

How is this not being pursued as a hate crime?

If I can be a part of it NY, NY.
(h/t Electronic Village)