I have already told you about the interference by the Levy administration with the Suffolk Hate Crimes Task Force report on the killing of Marcelo Lucero. Someone close to the Task Force sent me e-mails from Deputy County Executive Ed Dumas to the Chair of the Task Force DuWayne Gregory. In one of the e-mails, Dumas admits that from the start the County Executive was opposed to any public hearings relating to the string of anti-Latino hate crimes in Suffolk. According to Dumas:
In the wake of the…murder of Marcelo Lucero and the heightened rhetoric that marked that period, it was our belief that it was time to ratchet down the rancor and the tensions by instead working on solutions that various sectors of the community could unite behind. We thought the best way to accomplish this goal was through small meetings to encourage dialogue with various stakeholders rather than numerous public forums that we thought could perpetuate hostilities. You did not agree and chose to ignore those suggestions.
Steve Levy did anything but “ratchet down” the rhetoric. Within days of the killing he was referring to the lynching as a “one day story” and criticizing reporters for continuing to cover it. A couple of weeks later, he compared Marcelo Lucero’s death to a “colonoscopy”. So Levy’s interest was not in ratcheting down the hatred, it was in covering up his administration’s incitements and the failure by the police after he took power to adequately address anti-immigrant hate crimes.
Although Dumas claims that Levy wanted to address the hate crime issue through “small meetings”, these meetings never took place. In fact, Levy has refused to meet with representatives of the immigrant community for more than two years. No small meetings for purposes of dialogue have ever taken place. The only thing true in the statement is that Levy did not want an independent Task Force to hold hearings at which immigrants could tell their stories.
In an e-mail, Dumas admits that he went around the back of the Task Force to obtain a copy of the draft report by pressuring the county agency charged with drafting it:
when I learned that the draft report was ready to be disseminated and that it would include a significant amount of information concerning Suffolk County Police Department programs and initiatives, I asked for an opportunity to review [it]
Now let’s get this straight. Dumas did not ask the Task Force or its chairman for a chance to review the document. He pressured county employees to let him review it for the purpose of making changes before the report was even seen by the Task Force.
Task Force Chairman Gregory believes that substantial portions of the original report were changed by the Levy administration.
[...] calling for meaningful reforms to address Suffolk County’s poor record on hate crimes. As I reported last week, Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy has repeatedly tried to derail the efforts of the Suffolk [...]