http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c36_a14071/News/New_York.html Kosher Butcher’s Son Tied To Patchogue Hate Crime
Happier times: The murder of Ecuadorian immigrant Marcelo Lucero, above, unleashed an outpouring of sympathy across Long Island.
by Doug Chandler
Special To The Jewish Week
When the news broke last week of a modern-day lynching of an Ecuadorian immigrant at the hands of a gang of seven high school students in Patchogue, L.I., leaders of the Jewish community stood in the forefront of groups condemning the senseless hate crime and expressing solidarity with the area’s Latino residents.
The American Jewish Committee organized a rally against hate four days after the Nov. 8 murder, and one of the village’s two synagogues, Temple Beth El of Patchogue, hosted a public forum last Friday.
Both the rally and the forum, sponsored by the village and the state Division of Human Rights, drew rabbis who spoke of their horror at the death of Marcelo Lucero, 37, and of the need for healing.
But what
Jewish leaders didn’t know until much later, as it turns out, was that the driver of the SUV in which the teens were riding, Jordan Dasch, 17, of Medford, is the son of a kosher butcher in Plainview, L.I.
As the story made national news, fueled by the dismissive comments of Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy — a staunch opponent of illegal immigrant workers on Long Island — word gradually leaked out about Dasch’s heritage. And as Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota prepared to present the case to a grand jury, a fuller, though incomplete, picture of the teenager began to emerge.
Dasch was a familiar face to some who shopped at the Kosher Food Emporium on Old Country Road, where he and his mother, Bobbie, occasionally worked. Family friends described him as a loner who was often picked on in school because his father, Lawrence, is Jewish.
He was not bar mitzvah, though, and the family is apparently unaffiliated with any synagogue. The spiritual leaders of two synagogues that serve the Medford community, including Temple Beth El, said they don’t know the family.
Dasch’s MySpace page featured a picture of a Jewish star with a Nazi swastika embedded in the middle, according to Long Island Wins, a pro-immigrant organization that downloaded the page before it was removed from the Web site. The group, based in Port Washington, claimed that Dasch referred to himself on the social networking site as a “Nazi Jew.”
Dasch and others teens, all of them classmates at Patchogue-Medford High School, gathered in a local park on the night of the slaying when one of the teens suggested that they go “beat up some Mexicans,” authorities said. They later spotted Lucero and a friend near the Patchogue train station. And then, like a lynch mob, they closed in on the pair, hurling ethnic taunts, according to Assistant District Attorney Nancy Clifford.
One of the teenagers punched Lucero in the face, authorities said, and in the scuffle that followed, Jeffrey Conroy, 17, allegedly plunged a knife into Lucero’s chest, killing him. The friend with him that night was not harmed.
The assailants fled but were quickly arrested by police, who had seen them walking through the community earlier in the evening. Police charged them with felony gang assault, and Conroy was charged with manslaughter as a hate crime. The seven pleaded not guilty at their arraignments on Monday. Authorities were also checking reports that, shortly before the stabbing, they may have beaten another Hispanic man who was walking alone on the street.
Dasch’s father is said to be distraught. He has told friends that his son, a high school senior, said he did not know all of the other teens who rode in his family’s car that fateful night, that he remained in the back of the pack and that he didn’t engage in the fight. He does, however, know Conroy, whose family is said to be well known in the community for their active support of various charities.
The lawyer retained by the family, Michael Gajdos, of Patchogue, told The Jewish Week that the family lives in an integrated area and that he has been told that the younger Dasch has black and Hispanic friends — not the kind of friends a “hater” would hang around with. Gajdos also said that neither Jordan Dasch nor either of the family’s two older children have ever had any problems with law enforcement in the past. He described the parents as shocked and “trying to come to grips” with the incident.
Members of the community have been mourning Lucero, a Patchogue resident who reportedly immigrated to the United States 16 years ago and worked at a dry-cleaning business in Riverhead.
Calls have also gone out for reflection and healing, with school officials promising workshops to address intolerance, and the State Division of Human Rights saying that other forums will take place in the future. Among the organizations that have contacted the school district is the Anti-Defamation League, according to Joel Levy, the ADL’s New York regional director, and Manuel Sanzone, principal of the local high school.
In the wake of the murder, one of the most dramatic gestures came from AJC’s Long Island Chapter, which has already built bridges with Long Island’s Hispanic community through the Latino-Jewish Council, a group it organized three years ago. The chapter printed posters with an image of the Statue of Liberty and the words, “We Are All One,” and urged residents and shopkeepers to display them prominently. The move recalled an episode 15 years ago in Billings, Mont., when, in reaction to anti-Semitism, paper menorahs suddenly appeared in windows throughout the city to demonstrate that Jews there were not alone.
“People need to speak out when others are targeted because of their race, ethnicity or religion,” said Caroline Levy, the chapter’s executive director, who noted that the murder took place immediately before the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the anti-Jewish pogrom in Germany. That, in itself, was a reminder that “these kinds of incidents can happen to any group,” she said.
But along with those calls has come an intense debate over what some say is a climate of hate that led to the killing and other incidents. Much of the debate has focused on Steve Levy, the county executive, who, shortly after news of the killing broke, told a reporter that the crime would be “a one-day story” anywhere but on his home turf.
In the past, the county executive has tried to deputize county police to act as immigration agents, signed legislation to bar undocumented immigrants from working for county contractors and sought to drive day laborers from local streets. He also founded a national organization to lobby for crackdowns and appeared on “Lou Dobbs,” the CNN host who has long been a vocal critic of illegal immigration.
In the past week, however, Suffolk County’s Levy (who attends a Catholic parish) has apologized for the “one-day” comment and delivered a televised address to residents. In his speech, given Tuesday night, he noted the irony of how the murder nearly coincided with Kristallnacht and said he hoped Lucero’s death would not be in vain.
“Perhaps it can be spark for all of us — yours truly included — to admit our faults, to work more closely with one another, to pay more attention to what our children are doing and to pay more attention to what we say,” Levy said. “Words do matter, and I will do all I can to help ensure that my words are as sensitive as possible toward meeting our goal to heal and to unite.”
Earlier in the week, Levy announced the creation of a five-point plan to fight hate and promote tolerance in the county’s schools and neighborhoods. Among other things, the plan would create a Hispanic liaison between the Suffolk Police Department and the Latino community and work with school boards and PTA’s in combating hate and seek donations for the victim’s family. Advocates for immigrants in the county, as well as Levy himself, have said that hate crimes have gone unrecorded in the area because undocumented immigrants are afraid to contact the police for fear of being arrested and deported.
One of those closely following the discussion is Renee Ortiz, 35, co-chairwoman of the Latino-Jewish Council and, at one point, Steve Levy’s director of minority affairs.
Ortiz, now the chief deputy clerk of the Suffolk County Legislature, believes that the policies and proposals of “certain public officials” have fueled a climate of hate, whether or not that was their intention. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we had a murder and other bias incidents simultaneously,” she said, referring to the killing in Patchogue and other episodes in the past few days, including the distribution of Ku Klux Klan pamphlets in Islip Terrace.
“It’s very personal for me on all levels,” said Ortiz, who left her job with Levy’s administration over policies she could no longer accept. Both Jewish and Hispanic, she described herself as acutely aware of the hatred because of both Jewish history and her sense that Latinos have become a “targeted group.”
“There’s definitely a timeline that leads up to what happened in Patchogue,” said Maryann Slutsky, the campaign director of Long Island Wins. The timeline includes some of Levy’s rhetoric, which she considers inflammatory, Slutsky said.
Although he agrees that “part of solution” relates to the community’s political leadership, Galen Kirkland, the state’s human rights commissioner, said he’s not interested in criticizing public figures or pointing fingers. He’s interested, instead, in promoting healing and unity, he said.
Similarly, Rabbi Steven Moss, chairman of the county’s Human Rights Commission and its Anti-Bias Task Force, said he believes accusations against the county executive and county lawmakers distract from the real issue, which is the crime itself and the hatred harbored by the teens who allegedly participated in it. The question going ahead “is how we deal with young people and educate them in terms of how they should view human life.”
Rabbi Moss also commented on the news concerning Jordan Dasch, saying the community “might never know why he did what he did.” There are all kinds of motivations for why people behave as they do, he said.
“The lesson is not to wring our hands but to treat this as a call — a Torah call, if you will — to increase our education of positive values for the betterment of our children. ... The Torah calls [on] us to choose life.”
Topic: Jewish young fool involved in killing of Ecuadorian (Read 1385 times)