When Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorean immigrant, was murdered, allegedly by seven Patchogue-Medford High School students, it exposed a depth of ugliness that many refused to believe could exist in the gentle suburbs.  The aftermath of denials, explanations, scape-goating and fingerpointing has exposed why this could happen without anyone seemingly noticing how deeply and virulently the hatred had grown.

This New York Times editorial makes an important point, that the indicators were everywhere that hatred toward immigrants was explosive, and were ignored by police disinclined to deal seriously with marauding bands of children on the hunt for immigrants to harm.  They knew or should have known that a murder was only a moment away, and pretended not to notice.

There are real issues that exist between long-time residents of Long Island who have seen a huge influx of immigrants, all of whom in the minds of residents are tarred as illegal though many, if not most, are not.  They have disrupted a suburban lifestyle that residents worked hard to achieve, with their cultural differences, lack of assimilation and conduct that is simply course, crude, at times offensive and at minimum disruptive.

But the anger at lingering groups of migrant workers standing around a street corner hoping for someone to come along with a landscaping job for the day, urinating against a wall and throwing garbage and insults around at will, is not an excuse for murder.  Anger turned to hatred.  Hatred turned to violence.  Violence turned to murder.

The sides in this issue should be ashamed.  The bystanders who watched this happen should be ashamed as well.  One fed the flames of hatred, while the other watched the fire grow and stood silent.

The alleged perpetrators of this murder were kids.  High school children are incapable of coming up with hatred to this degree on their own, and this no doubt reflected the seething hatred that permeated their homes, families and community.  Did they hope to turn their children into killers?  Was the conduct of these immigrants worthy of violence and murder?  Are they so consumed by their hatred that they are unable to comprehend that this was outrageously above and beyond the issue of residual NIMBY Long Island anger at anything that interferes with the quiet enjoyment of community?

Apparently so, as demonstrated by the continuing controversy.  There remains no grasp of how deep, how out of control, how wrong this has grown.  If there was any inkling, then instead of pointing fingers and making excuses, people would lay down their arms, their hatred, to recognize that it has gone way too far, and that they have now harmed everyone in the community.  This isn’t happening.

The death of Marcelo Lucero doesn’t have to be in vain.  It is, because no lesson has yet been learned.  Another hate crime was perpetrated last night, when “a group of eight youths in Patchogue shouted ethnic slurs at two Hispanic men coming out of a restaurant on East Main Street, then pushed one of them.”  It was broken up by a local code enforcement officer who happened to be passing by.

This is a disgrace and disaster, and must be stopped.  It’s time for extreme intervention by Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy.  If he’s not up to the task, then we need to go higher up the chain.  But we cannot wait for another murder to confront this problem head on.