Male victim recalls attack in Fall Creek
IPD investigation continues into 4 assaults on Halloween
By Raymond Drumsta
Journal Staff

ITHACA — As police continue to investigate a series of assaults Wednesday night in Fall Creek, first-hand sources — including one of the victims — are wondering about a motive for the crimes, which occurred amid the trick-or-treat atmosphere of Halloween Night.

“It is unknown if they are gang-related or racially motivated,” Deputy Chief John Barber of the Ithaca Police said of the attacks. “We are following up on leads received from the public, and the investigation is ongoing.”

In four separate incidents — all within an hour of each other Wednesday night — a group reported to police as black youths, mostly male, approached individual victims and punched them in the face, police said.
The number of assailants in each assault ranged from five to 10. In some incidents, the assailants were described as wearing dark hooded sweatshirts. While most of the victims declined medical attention, all suffered minor head injuries.

Preliminary evidence indicates the four incidents are related, or that the suspects in some or all of the attacks may be the same people, the Ithaca Police said.

One victim recounted his attack Friday during an interview with The Ithaca Journal. The newspaper's policy is to not identify crime victims unless the victim insists of being identified.

Among his other injuries, the victim is nursing a headache from the assault, which happened in an area of few streetlights and few trick-or-treaters, he said.

The youths were walking toward him, he recalled, and he felt he should let them pass. They didn't say a word, he added.

“That's why I didn't make eye contact,” he said. “Looking back on it, I think that may have given them the opportunity to attack me.”

He stepped to the side and glanced down as they approached, he said.

“They struck me in the head with something,” he said. “It took me by surprise. I didn't see it coming at all. It was a flash, and the next thing you know, I was knocked reeling. I fell onto the stairs of the house I was in front of and crumpled to the ground.”

The steps were concrete, and he hit his head on them as he fell, he said. The youths ran down the street laughing, perhaps because they were surprised or shocked by what they did, he added.

“Or, maybe they got a genuine thrill out of it,” the victim said. “That's the really scary part. I hope that's not the case.”

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ITHACA, N.Y., Oct. 18 — Nestled in the hills near Cayuga Lake’s southern tip, surrounded by creeks, waterfalls and two of the Northeast’s more prestigious colleges, this city of about 30,000 has long prided itself on its cultural diversity.

In 1997, the Utne Reader put Ithaca — where students from Cornell University and Ithaca College boost the population to about 50,000 — atop its list of “America’s Most Enlightened Towns,” trumpeting an environment-friendly business community and a local currency system intended to support city merchants.

A popular bumper sticker here reads, “Ithaca: 10 square miles surrounded by reality.”

But as reality encroaches, residents and community leaders now concede that racial tensions have long simmered at Ithaca High School, a volatile mix of blue-collar youths from the city, children of the farms in the surrounding countryside and the sons and daughters of professors.

“This community is at the boiling point, because not only students are frustrated, so are parents,” said James Turner, founder of the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell. “There’s a broad-based lack of confidence in the leadership of the district. I’m watching this go from bad to worse.”

Tempers flared last week over the district’s handling of a two-year-old racial-harassment complaint. Almost half of the 1,600 students at Ithaca High School stayed home two days amid fears of possible violence and a rumored “hit list” that singled out minority students who have been seeking a forum to bring their grievances into the open.

For one thing, some students contend that administrators routinely dole out harsher punishments to minority students, a charge that school officials deny.

The latest furor arose when one mother claimed that district officials failed to act quickly enough when her daughter — a 12-year-old middle school student at the time — was subjected to racial slurs, threatened, spat on and punched by a group of white boys who called themselves “the rednecks” on the school bus beginning in the fall of 2005.

Upset that it took five months for district officials to step in and end the harassment — which resulted in suspensions and, in the case of two youths, criminal charges — the mother, Amelia Kearney, filed a complaint with the Tompkins County Human Rights Commission.

Earlier this year, the commission’s investigation determined that the district had violated state human rights law. “She was not receiving her education as she was entitled to, and this was based on race,” said Shawn Martel Moore, director of the commission, who also is a deputy county administrator.

But a public hearing on the complaint was postponed earlier this month after lawyers for the school board argued that the district is a municipality and not subject to the state human rights law, as a private school is. Further, they said, complying with the law would force the district to disclose information protected under federal privacy laws. The issue is likely to come up again at a school board meeting scheduled for Tuesday night.

“Based on the language of the various statutes that define education corporations, it’s pretty clear to us that it does not include school districts,” said Subhash Viswanathan, the district’s attorney. “A private, not-for-profit college or university would be an education corporation. Any private, not-for-profit institution would be an education corporation.”

But Ms. Martel Moore rebutted the school board’s position, insisting that exempting the district would prevent any student from appealing to the State Division of Human Rights about any type of harassment, whether it was based on race, religion, sexual preference or disability.

“This is not about race,” Ms. Martel Moore said. “This is about all our children.”

A state judge sided with the commission last month, but the district appealed and received a temporary restraining order delaying the public hearing until the appellate division rules on the jurisdictional issue.

Judith Pastel, the district’s superintendent, said officials handled Ms. Kearney’s harassment complaints properly.

“I believe my staff was not negligent pursuing or investigating each of the complaints raised and then following through,” Dr. Pastel said.

Angered by the district’s decision to appeal the ruling, students, parents and other members of the community held a protest at the district’s administrative building, and then students demonstrated at the high school.
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In response, black protesters said, a group of white students wearing camouflage clothing shouted “welfare” and other taunts, and that one asked, “Who is looking for the rope to make the noose?”

Then word spread throughout the school that a group of white students from the outlying areas had compiled a list of activists singled out for attack the next day.

The principal, Joseph Wilson, declared, “We have tracked every bit of info, and we have not found anything other than, ‘He said that, she said that, she saw someplace.’ ”

Still, a week after he locked down the school during a student protest, he announced last Wednesday that any absences the next two days would be excused.

“You can’t tell people that they’re safe if half the school district stays home,” said Michelle Berry, a member of the Ithaca City Council who has called for the resignation of Dr. Pastel.

It is not just the parents of minority students who are disturbed by the officials in the sprawling school district.

“Instead of saying, ‘We have a problem,’ they said, ‘We don’t like the venue in which we’re being criticized,’” said Cindy Smalt of Brooktondale, the mother of two sons who graduated from Ithaca High School and a daughter who is a freshman. “To me, that is an extremely arrogant response to the problem.”

She added: “It does go both ways. They do it with all kids, not just black kids.”

Stung by the criticism from all sides, two separate meetings were held simultaneously at the high school — one led by a white principal of one of the district’s rural elementary schools, and another by the assistant superintendent, who is black. But to some students, that only exacerbated the problem.

“The two groups that needed to talk to each other were separated,” said Patrick Booker, a 16-year-old junior. “It made things a little worse, because they decided to do what they wanted, how they wanted. We were supposed to be talking to them about the problem.”

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Funny, that sort of shit happens in these parts all the time, hardly worth mention. Page 4 police blotter at best. Resort to violence for the least offence is a tradition in many families, more so with whites than blacks, though the reality of the street , poverty and turf war makes many black neighborhoods more violent. Violence is very ingrained in the culture, a province founded upon the principles of profit, commodity and slavery, where fragile egos and aristocratic arrogance set the tone. Violence is expected and Calvin is justiified. Yet most of these violent assholes are to a large degree bascially decent people, they'll just fight at the drop of a hat. The rich avoid such display, they're meaner than snakes and can get away with it, which is why you don't hear about it, leaks are snuffed with vigor.

Yet afore mentioned violent assholes will give you the shirt off their back in your moment of need, mostly regardless of race. Not the rich ones though. People are funny, life is complicated.

I've had students ask me if I'd like them to beat other student's who've given me problems. This is in all sincerity and meant to be extremely nice.

I wonder if the coverage of the Jena 6 in many classrooms hasn't awakened the "noose" concept in some kids. I've been told that within the last ten years they were still burning crosses near here. The "northeast" mentality many think of is pretty much limited to the metropolitan areas. Ithaca, and nearby Corning, are mini urbanlike centers with much sophistication, but go out into those hills 5, 10 miles, Mecklenburg, for instance, and its Appalachia and very similar to West Virginia et al.