http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/12/nyregion/12attack.html?ex=1155528000&en=984349e3256156bb&ei=5087%0A

Brooklyn Community Is on Edge and in Spotlight After Hate-Crime Arrests

Published: August 12, 2006
Normally summer is the perfect time to be a youngster in Gerritsen Beach, a flyspeck neighborhood deep in south Brooklyn, squeezed between Sheepshead Bay and Marine Park. Its alleys and skinny roads are ideal for tossing baseballs, racing scooters and popping wheelies. Its modest beach, open only to locals, offers a cooling sanctuary and a snack hut with cheap food.

But this summer has been far from idyllic for this tight-knit community, where it seems everyone knows everyone else, and where there is only one main road in and out. Parents are urging their children to stay indoors. Teenagers are hanging out with friends in faraway homes. Locals say their community feels as if it has been under siege ever since trouble struck nearly seven weeks ago.

Just after 9 p.m. on June 26, four black teenagers from distant neighborhoods got lost and were biking through Gerritsen Beach’s streets, the police said, when a raucous band of white youths began chasing and threatening them, all the while shouting racist remarks. Two of the teenagers escaped, while one hid under a bush, sobbing, and a fourth, Winston Johnson, 16, was thrown off his bicycle and beaten, according to the police.

Detectives were deployed from the Hate Crimes Task Force. Neighbors were canvassed, a roadblock was set up and people were stopped and questioned. In the weeks since, eight people, ages 12 to 21, have been arrested, and most of them have been charged with hate crimes.

Parents and residents in Gerritsen Beach have been aghast and furious, insisting that their youths and young men were unjustly singled out.

But the police tell a different story. They say the people of Gerritsen Beach have turned inward and wrapped themselves in silence. Deputy Inspector Michael J. Osgood, commanding officer of the Hate Crimes Task Force, said residents of areas where other racially charged episodes occurred — in Howard Beach, Queens; Mill Basin, Brooklyn; and Great Kills, Staten Island — had readily provided the investigators with useful tips.

But the more people in Gerritsen Beach are pressed for information, Inspector Osgood said, the more they shut down.

“The people in the community are refusing to speak to the N.Y.P.D.,” Inspector Osgood said. “We’ve never had this happen before in the city of New York.” (Wow. What a whopper. As if niggers don't always clam up to police.)

When asked, many people in Gerritsen Beach insisted they did not hear or see anything on the night of June 26.

Joseph Jirovec said his son Michael, 21, who was arrested and released on Wednesday, heard a commotion outside that night and tried to defuse it. Richard DaSilva, 18, who was also arrested and released Wednesday, said he was knew something was happening but was not involved. Others, who would not give their names, said that the black teenagers were trying to steal bicycles and that a fight erupted when local boys tried to stop them.

“Clearly, something happened,” said Edgar De Leon, a lawyer who represents one of the accused teenagers, Joseph DeSimone, 17. “But just to be out in the street does not mean you’re involved.”

Inspector Osgood, though, painted a more menacing picture.

The black teenagers — Winston Johnson, 16, Eron Augustus, Deon Davis and Joseph Pascall, all 15 — took a wrong turn into Gerritsen Beach’s maze of dead-end streets after playing basketball in a nearby park, he said. Each on his own bike, they passed a group of young white men and teenagers, he said.

According to Inspector Osgood, one of the white youths yelled, “Are you here to steal?” He said others shouted racial slurs and that one of the local youths then sent out an alert on his cellphone, drawing others into the streets.

Young men in a brown Toyota Camry hit Mr. Johnson’s bike, the inspector said, knocking him off. Mr. August and Mr. Davis pedaled away, he said. Mr. Pascall was also knocked off his bike but ran and hid on another street, the inspector said. A neighbor found him, trembling, and called 911.

Mr. Johnson was hit and kicked by the crowd that had quickly formed, Inspector Osgood said, but he then escaped, took a wrong turn, encountered them again and escaped once more. A neighbor found the teenager running, bloodied and scared out of his wits, and drove him to his home in Kings County, Inspector Osgood said.

“The Good Samaritan sees Winston full of blood and chased by at least 20 whites,” he said. “That gentleman probably saved his life.”

But residents said that since that night, the police scrutiny has been unbearable, forcing residents into a deep retreat. Police sweeps of the neighborhood, they said, have picked up too many innocent young men and unfairly smeared their reputations.

They also fiercely resent and reject any suggestion that their neighborhood is racist.

“My kids are raised to be colorblind, and their integrity has been compromised and my family is broken by this,” said Mr. Jirovec, a fireman. His sons, Joseph, 18, and Michael were linked to the attack, although Mr. Jirovec said the charges against Michael were later dropped.

“It’s like an ugly shadow,” he said. “It’s like a scarlet letter.”

The father of one of the alleged victims, who lives in Brownsville, Brooklyn, scoffed at the notion that the boys were in Gerritsen Beach to steal bicycles.

“They have their own bikes. Why would they steal bikes?” said Trujillo Davis, Deon Davis’ father. “They ended up in the wrong neighborhood, that’s all.”

But even so, what happened on the night of June 26 has Mr. Davis worried. He does not allow Deon to ride his bike anymore.