No Equal Justice: Feds Probe Suffolk Police

The Justice Department announced last week that it has begun a formal investigation into the Suffolk County Police Department nine months after it received a complaint that the police failed to adequately address the concerns of Latinos in the community.

That complaint was filed in the aftermath of a brutal murder of Ecuadorean immigrant Marcelo Lucero, who was stabbed to death by seven thugs who had a history of preying on Latino men.

"This is a civil, pattern or practice investigation that will seek to determine whether there are systemic violations of the Constitution or federal law by members of the SCPD," U.S. Department of Justice Spokesman Alejandro Miyar told Newsday on Monday, adding that such investigations take 12 to 18 months.

Suffolk County Police Commissioner Richard Dormer said he welcomed the probe as an opportunity to "dispel the rumors and misinformation" that his force has failed to protect Latinos, adding, "We have very, very comprehensive policies in place and they were in place well before the Lucero murder."

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) seems to disagree. In a chilling report issued a month ago, the SPLC says that officials "minimiz[ed] the tragedy" in an area where "nativist intolerance and hate violence had been festering for years… fostered by some of the very same officials who were now wishing the story away."

The organization sent a Spanish-speaking researcher there to interview Latino residents, and they learned immigrants -- both documented and undocumented -- are routinely subjected to beatings, intimidation and harassment. Such abuses includes being beaten with bats, shot with BB-guns or being pepper-sprayed.

A New York Times article in January came to similar conclusions. Times reporters found that, in many instances, immigrants failed to properly report the crimes because of fear about their legal status.

In other cases, police and fellow residents seemed to look the other way. In a 2007 incident, a man beaten by white youth pleaded for the help of a female motorist, who just laughed and drove away with the assailants in tow.

Tensions have risen in the past few years as the Latino population has exploded due to immigration, which has become the scapegoat for budgetary problems.

Long Island is not some place in Texas or the Deep South; it's a stone's throw from New York City. That the murder was not a random event transpiring in a social vacuum, but rather the culmination of an ongoing pattern of violence, should serve as a a sharp reminder to complacent folks that racism and anti-immigrant anger is not limited to "somewhere over there."

M. Junaid Levesque-Alam writes about America and Islam at his website, Crossing the Crescent, and for WireTap, where he is also the immigration blogger.