Let’s start with the four black teenagers who, this past June 26,  lost in the neighborhood riding their bikes, were attacked by a mob shouting racial slurs. Three managed to escape, but the all-white mob, according to the DA’s indictment, beat the fourth and stole his bike. A passing driver rescued the victim and drove him home.

Then a second attack occurred on March 30th, 2005 in a public park just outside Gerritsen Beach. A group of black girls from Marine Park Junior High School allegedly  kicked, punched and shouted slurs at a group of white girls from St. Edmund Preparatory High School. The black girls were charged with misdemeanors, but the parents of the private school girls was the assault classified as a race crime due to the slurs.

The worst occurred on October 13th when, police say,  Michael J. Sandy, 29, gay and black, died after a group of white teens from Gerritsen Beach beat and robbed him. The attackers, after exchanging AOL instant messages with the victim, lured him to a deserted area of Brooklyn, robbed and beat him, then chased him onto the Belt Parkway, where he was struck by an oncoming car. He died in Brookdale University Hospital five days later. The men were indicted and charged with hate crimes that could get them 25 years in prison.
While Recharger gets that a lone wolf could plan and carry out a truly moronic crime, he  doesn’t get how a group of men have such pathetically-empty lives that they’d take all that time to write emails, meet and beat a defenseless, then chase the guy into traffic.

What, The Playboy Channel wasn’t on that night?

-- Robert O’Brien