Nassau police video an unflinching look at hate crime

Warning.

The images are graphic, and so horrific that more than once I had to turn away.

But that shouldn't stop a powerful, 12-minute video from being required viewing for every teenager and adult on Long Island.

"Hate - Crossing the Line" was made for teenagers. But it's now posted online at the Nassau County Police Department's Web site.

>> Click here to see the video

The video produced by the department, slams home what hate does in a way that makes the lesson unforgettable.

Junior and senior high school students from Nassau helped shape its content; 39 of those students actually appear in the video.

They speak frankly. Peer to peer. Sometimes in language guaranteed to make adults cringe. They talk the way young adults talk - mostly out of earshot of disapproving adults - to each other in hallways, cafeterias, sporting events.

And that's all part of the plan for sending the video to junior and senior high schools in Nassau.

"The goal isn't to have some adult pop in the video and say, 'Here's your hate lesson' and walk away," said Det. Sgt. Gary Shapiro, head of the department's hate crimes bureau.

"It's to have teenagers teaching teenagers, to have students talking to students, leading students in discussions of what they see and what they should be doing about it," he said.

Before sending it to schools, the department is finishing a discussion guide. And, down the line, there are plans to gather even more material from students to help other students address hate.

But the video has something for adults, too. And not just for parents, who get a bird's-eye view of what happens when kids choose hate.

The video splices images of Long Island children with images of some of the most horrific hate crimes ever.

That includes the dead of the Holocaust. And the body of a black man hanging from a tree. There are also images of more recent atrocities.

There are graphic, color images from a Long Island Rail Road train, where a madman, Colin Ferguson, had calmly walked through the aisle, shooting commuters because, he would later say, they were white. To my knowledge, it is the first time those images have been shown locally.

Because the video concentrates on Nassau, there are no images of the aftermath of the killing of Marcelo Lucero, who was chased, hit and stabbed because his skin was brown, prosecutors charge.

Lucero's absence in the film, however, should not erase the image from any Long Island resident's mind.

The video offers the clearest, cleanest explanation of what constitutes a hate crime that I have ever seen.

It's even clearer than published explanations that have come from some officials in Suffolk County, where federal authorities are investigating allegations of discriminatory policing.

Shapiro said that Nassau police have had inquiries about using the video from people in Alabama, Virginia, California, New Jersey, Arizona and as far away as Canada. In the almost two weeks since it was first posted on the site, the video's had more than 1,200 hits.

But one year after Lucero, teenagers and adults in Nassau and Suffolk need the lesson.

Watch the video.

And let the children teach.