May 1996
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There has been a lynching here in NY. A white NYC police officer has been arrested and is being held under 500,000 cash or 1 million bond. He is accussed of beating a 21 year old Black man into a coma. The Black man was with a White women (when will we learn) and the police officer who was off duty objected and began shouting racial slurs(nigger). At this point the off duty cop attacked the Black man hitting him with a "Club" car anti-thief device. The brother was knocked uncouncious on the first blow. While on the ground the White cop hit him in the head 5 times. The doctors report that the young man had a hole in his skull the size of hand.
This young brother was a good person, student, and resident. The news papers reported that he had an unblemished record (you know they were looking for a criminal record or some other justification). He was at a club in Westhampton Beach where he lived and grew up. The cops were also there drinking. When bystanders tried to break it up several cops who were with the perp. pulled out guns and held the crowd at bay while the beating continued.
Summary: NEW YORK (AP) - A suspect in the Westhampton beating case was videotaped two months ago saying he abused steroids and that the drugs would often send him into uncontrollable rages, WNYW television reported. Offen, 25, was indicted last week on charges of attempted murder for allegedly beating a black youth, Shane Daniels, 21, of Riverhead, into a coma during an altercation outside a nightclub...
Summary: (June 1 1996, 7:00 AM EST) NEW YORK (Reuter) - The Justice Department said Friday it was investigating whether a black man's civil rights were violated when a New York City policeman allegedly beat him into a coma for accompanying a white woman in the posh resort getaway of the Hamptons over Memorial Day weekend. Police said Friday they had questioned a man whom they traced to the scene...
Summary: Vincent, myself, and my girlfriend, went across the street to my car which was parked by the bank in a parking lot . . . While we were by my car talking, some guys on the other side of the parking lot started saying things to us like, "Sounds like fighting words, and calling us niggers." He kept hitting Shane in the head with this pipe while the guy with the gun stood in front pointed the...
-- Newsday
Jailed Detective Is Called Far From Flashy
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
NEW YORK -- Fellow officers on Wednesday described Detective Constantine Chronis, who has been charged in the beating that left a Long Island man critically injured over the weekend, as a quiet family man who did his job without flash or fuss.
In his 10 years on the force, Chronis, 34, has been recognized four times for meritorious conduct, and has never faced a disciplinary charge, police officials said.
Before he was assigned to the narcotics district of the Manhattan North Patrol Borough Command in 1993, Chronis worked at a cadet training unit, the 19th Precinct in Manhattan, the Police Academy and the 110th Precinct in Queens, said Doram Tamari, a police spokesman. Chronis became a detective at Manhattan North in March 1995.
"The kid was real middle of the road," said Capt. Michael Gabriel, who worked with him in Manhattan North narcotics. "He wasn't a hotshot. He wasn't a troublemaker. He just did his job and didn't attract a lot of attention."
One of Chronis' colleagues at the Manhattan North headquarters, who spoke on the condition of anonymity on Wednesday, said: "Nobody could believe what happened. It's not him at all."
The officer said Chronis kept largely to himself and liked to work out.
Chronis lives in Hicksville with his wife and two children, ages 2 and 4, said Edmund Chekmakian, a lawyer who represented the detective in his arraignment on Wednesday in Riverhead before Judge Robert Kelly of Suffolk County Court. The detective pleaded not guilty of assault in the first degree. He is being held in Suffolk County Jail in Riverhead in lieu of $500,000 cash bail or $1 million bond.
"Detective Chronos has been in law enforcement for 10 years," Chekmakian said. "He has the utmost faith in the justice system, and he is confident he will be totally vindicated." Here's the last of the three articles. This one focuses on the victim, 21-year-old Shane Daniels.
Allison Bojarski
abojarsk@ic.sunysb.edu
SUNY Stony Brook
'Real Nice Kid' in Coma After Beating
RIVERHEAD, N.Y. -- From the street where he grew up to the high school where he graduated in 1993, Shane Daniels was described Wednesday as a skinny young man with a sense of purpose, lots of friends, a strong work ethic and a smiling, unassuming demeanor.
"When you read about these things people always say the person involved was a nice kid," said Mark Bauman, the Riverhead High School principal. "Sometimes it's true and sometimes it isn't. But in this case it really is true."
Daniels, 21, was in a coma today at University Hospital after a severe beating that the authorities say was delivered by an off-duty New York City police officer Saturday night outside a bar in Westhampton Beach.
Doctors described his condition as critical and said that he was expected to survive, although with a likelihood of permanent damage to his vision.
Earl Gray, a cousin and neighbor of Daniels, said the young man was frequently seen jogging during his days in high school, where he was All-League in cross country in his senior year.
Gray remembered that Daniels sometimes went on crash diets, slight though he was, to make weight as a wrestler.
The 1993 school yearbook listed Daniels as also participating in band, the Martin Luther King Club and the Naval Junior ROTC.
Daniels had planned to join the Navy, Gray said, but had to abandon the idea when his jaw was injured in another assault.
Another neighbor, Tony Giordano, spoke highly of Daniels, his parents and his older brother and drew back his bedroom curtain to point out the Daniels' neat, well-tended home and immaculately landscaped yard.
"This is the kind of people they are," said Giordano, who remembered when the victim's father, Curtis Daniels, a construction worker, bricked the Giordano front walk as a favor, and stopped by with his wife, Laura, to offer condolences after Giordano's wife died during the winter.
"Aces," he said of the younger Daniels. "A real nice kid. Always with a smile. It was always Mr. Giordano. Not a wise guy."
Bauman, the Riverhead police and authorities in Suffolk County said there was no record of Daniels' ever being arrested or of having had run-ins with the law.
Mostly, Daniels worked. Giordano recalled that his young neighbor once held down three jobs at once: at a Caldor, at a pizza parlor and as a home health aide.
"He was always busy, always trying to make money," said Giordano. "He was no rowdy; just a real nice kid from a real nice family."
Gray said: "This is just terrible. We're sick about it. We can't believe it's Shane sitting in that hospital."