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Graffiti suspects not charged with hate crimes

BY ZACHARY R. DOWDY | zachary.dowdy@newsday.com

9:16 PM EST, November 21, 2008

Crime Scene units investigate racial slur on vehicle in driveway of home on Gores Drive in Mastic. More than 20 cars were targeted with racial slurs and other words. (Photo by James Carbone / November 21, 2008)

Despite the racist and sexually offensive scribblings that police say three Shirley men painted with shoe polish on as many as 40 cars in Mastic, Suffolk police are not charging the suspects with hate crimes, saying the acts of vandalism were "hate incidents," Suffolk's top cop said Friday.

"These were three guys who went down to that street to just put their stuff on the cars for fun," Commissioner Richard Dormer said at a news conference at police headquarters in Yaphank about a Nov. 12 graffiti rampage on Gores Drive.

Thomas Kujan, 20, of 5 Tipton Dr. W., Fiore D'Angelo, 20, of 23 Ridge Rd., and Skylar Santiago, 21, of 24 Dorsett Place, have been charged with fourth-degree criminal mischief.

Dormer said the trio plastered dozens of cars with racist messages, including a reference to President-elect Barack Obama.

That brought the Secret Service into the investigation.

"We are monitoring Suffolk County's investigation," said Michael Seremetis, spokesman for the Secret Service's New York field office.

The suspects were charged and released on bail and will be arraigned later, police and prosecutors said.

Relatives of the men declined to comment when reached at their homes Friday, and their attorneys could not be reached for comment.

Dormer said the incidents were hateful, but not hate crimes because they were not directed at an individual or group with the intention of threatening them.

Dormer said the acts don't "rise to the level of a hate crime."

He said they were investigated "aggressively" by the Hate Crimes Unit, headed by Det. Sgt. Robert Reecks, who appeared with Dormer at the conference.

"They were fooling around," Dormer said about the suspects.

"They wanted to fool around with their friends. It was a joke, that kind of thing, they thought. We don't think it's a joke."

Activists have accused Suffolk's police department of manipulating its statistics to show county hate crime on the decline, a charge police officials have strongly denied.

On Gores Drive Friday, some residents said they were relieved by the arrests.

The incidents occurred four days after police and prosecutors said a Patchogue man, Marcelo Lucero, a native of Ecuador, was stabbed to death by teenagers who set out to attack Mexicans.

Arielle Breschici contributed

to this story, which was supplemented with Associated Press reports.