Posted on 06/30/2005 4:56:10 AM PDT by Abathar
NEW YORK (AP) - Three black men who ventured into a historically white neighborhood early Wednesday to steal a car were chased by a man with a baseball bat, police said. One man was beaten and suffered a fractured skull.
The attack happened several hours before dawn in the same section of the borough of Queens as an infamous 1986 beating of three black men whose car had broken down.
In Wednesday's attack, Nicholas Minucci, 21, was being charged with first-degree assault as a hate crime, menacing and criminal possession of a weapon, police Commissioner Ray Kelly said at a news conference.
The three blacks told investigators they had been looking for a car to steal when they entered the Howard Beach neighborhood. They told police a white man in an SUV passed them in the street, exchanged stares with them and then returned with two friends and a baseball bat before chasing them on foot.
Glen Moore, 20, stumbled to the ground and was beaten, suffering a fractured skull. He was in serious condition. The other two men escaped and summoned police, who scouted the neighborhood with them and spotted the SUV again.
Police stopped the vehicle and found the bat inside. The driver was arrested, and officers were seeking two other suspects.
The hate crime charge is punishable by a minimum of eight years in prison. The district attorney said that he didn't know if Minucci had a lawyer and that he would be arraigned Thursday.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he and the police commissioner would not allow such "an ugly incident" to divide the city.
"We've accomplished too much to let that happen," he said, noting that the area had been free of such crimes for at least two years.
On Dec. 20, 1986, a group of white teenagers attacked three black men who were stranded in the neighborhood when their car stalled.
One of the men was fatally struck by a car as he fled. Another was beaten with a baseball bat and tree branches. The third escaped.
The attack ignited racial tension in New York and was compared to a lynching by then-Mayor Ed Koch. Eight of the teenagers were convicted or pleaded guilty to charges of manslaughter, assault, conspiracy and rioting.
Fortunately, I was able to ID the guy and I was the 3rd person to ID him. He did 2 years.
Meanwhile I asked the cop about my letting him get away and he said that I was well within my rights to perform a "citizens arrest". {It's hard to say that and not think of Gomer Pyle isn't it?}. He said that I could have jumped the guy and told him it was a citizens arrest and that this was going to be as hard as he made it. However, he did not say I could beat him over the head with a bat. There has to be limits. Otherwise my next neighbor will do that to my kid if my kid's frizbee happens to land in his yard. Their are bad people on both ends of the bat.
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Give it a rest. I know HB well and it used to be full of these guys. Twenty years ago you didn't have to be black to risk getting jumped there, all you had to be was an outsider. Oh, and btw genius, Guido is not a slur on LI, it's a description.
Wiiliam Kuntsler the famous I never met a criminal I didn't like New York Bleeder Lawyer said that Bernard Getz committed a hate crime because he had other options besides shooting the menacing thugs on the subway - not withstanding the fact that Getz and be mugged and beaten on a prior occasion - Kuntsler said the Getz could have
(1) Screamed
(2) Waved his arms
(3) Ran Away
So now it is a hate crime if you don't scream - wave your arms or run away
This wouldn't have been any problem if they hadn't
decided to steal cars from whites. Why didn't they
just steal black people's car?
Of course. It's all about control.
Black people can tell white people what they can and cannot say.
Black people can say the "N" word, and do... constantly.
White people better not dare...
But that's just the beginning.
>It looks to me like they just happened to be up to no good when they were attacked, but hadn't started yet. If they were attacked because they were in the act of stealing a car, that's one thing, but if they were attacked because they were black guys in a white neighborhood, that's assault.
I don't believe in prosecuting hate crimes. I just say they were attacked for no reason and leave it at that. That's bad enough.<
You're taking the word of a person who admits he came to an area to steal a car, that he hadn't begun the crime before the other man went after him.
Of course the New York Times would never interview only the car thief, and not the person accused (who, by the way, is innocent until proven guilty). Of course this poor put-upon car thief was simply looking for a nice car to steal, and this mean racist just jumped up and attacked him.
Sure.
They will charge this guy with a hate crime because he probably believes that black people are a bunch of criminals.
....if you go looking for trouble....eventually you'll find it (old father proverb)....
I come from Queens originally and if any suburban punk from LI ever called me a Guido to my face they would be heading back to LI in an ambulance.
Ever think it maybe was your mouth that caused you to get "jumped" a few times twenty years ago.
And the cops do not have to respond. That's the LAW -- at least according to the US Supreme Court three days ago.
Wrong??
And that wasn't a hate crime?
Whey didn't they choose to steal a car from a black neighborhood?
I mean, "hate crime".
It's unfortunate, isn't it?
In the Bronx a few years back some guy was sent to jail for shooting some slimebag for trying to steal his car (the car had been stolen many times before).
Of course the car owner was a fool--he should have realized the only smart thing to do was to move from a criminal area--but perhaps he was trapped by circumstances and had to live there.
Yeah, well, if you walked through Bed-Stuy at 5am, you'd be seriously injured too. So to the South Bronx, so to parts of Harlem. Especially if you were there to steal their car .. and it isn't hard to tell, I can spot the car theives in my neighborhood because they go around yanking door handles and have other charastic mannerisms. Everyone who lives in the inner city can spot a group of people up to no good. You must do so to survive.
Black folks aren't the only people that have to avoid certain areas. White folks just happen to rarely go into black neighborhoods to steal stuff, otherwise, the opposite would be a daily headline.
don't know if anyone else caught this, at the press conference bloomberg gave the names of all involved. but he gave the home address of the fellow with the bat. what could be his reason for this...
Look, people are either stupid, or just don't want to figure this out.
Who in their right mind is going to tell the cops "we were there to steal a car" if there was no evidence against them?
there is more to the story than the AP is reporting. How freaking retardedly stupid do youhave to be to tell the cops you were there to commit a crime, if you had done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG. Say you got lost. Say you were out for a walk. Don't say "uh, I was there to steal a car".
Come on guys. They obviously were spotted breaking into cars or had some witnesses telling the cops that they saw them doing something. Otherwise, you would say something, anything other than "we were there to steal cars".
I'm pretty sure that they were in he process of committing a crime by the time this incident occured. Otherwise, their statement just doesn't make sense unless these are the most honest car theives on the planet.
The AP reported the story this way because of the history of the neighborhood. The '86 incident was pretty blatant.
I can't believe the guys were dumb enough to admit they were there to steal cars. Their honesty helped tone down a situation that media is obviously trying to turn into a race war.
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