-Caveat Lector-
AMERICA: SOME CRIMES MORE HATEFUL THAN OTHERS
Chicago Tribune
By Kass
August 31, 1999
An ugly racial incident happened in Chicago's Bridgeport neighborhood over
the weekend.
But strangely, black ministers and political activists are holding no angry
news conferences. There is no mayoral campaign, so City Hall isn't publicly
calling on the president or the county state's attorney for justice. The
word is out in Bridgeport for the people to shut their mouths.
And official Chicago wants this one to go away.
Roy Trumblay, 55, and his daughter, Christine, 22, were walking on 35th
Street toward Comiskey Park on Saturday, to watch the White Sox.
Roy also had two grandchildren, a boy, 8, and a 10-year-old girl, and other
family members with him. As they passed the Deering District police station,
with dozens of other fans, a man jumped out of a car, police said.
He was clutching a wooden table leg, with a chunk of metal on the end. Roy
and Christine didn't know the man with the table leg. But he picked them out
anyway, on that crowded street.
When he was finished, father and daughter were crumpled on the pavement.
Their skulls were crushed open.
The man with the table leg has been charged with attempted murder. Roy and
Christine were comatose, in critical condition at Cook County Hospital on
Monday.
"We're all praying,"said Roy's brother, Peter Trumblay. "But if they make
it, their lives won't be the same. And the grandson? He's 8, and he broke down
in school today. He saw what happened to his grandfather.
"For no reason, the guy starts swinging a table leg with some iron on it,
some hardware. He hit my brother in the head and my brother goes down. He
hits him again in the head.
"The kids are screaming. My niece came along to help her father. He hit her,
too, in the head. They're both down. Then he goes after her boyfriend and
misses. The police arrest him," Trumblay said.
When these types of incidents occur in Bridgeport, they usually make national
news. And they're usually called hate crimes. Bridgeport is a tough white
ethnic neighborhood that has spawned several Chicago mayors, including both
Daleys, so the drama is set.
Ministers preach equal parts tolerance and anger. Political activists protest
at City Hall. The mayor is blamed, then the cops, then the media. The desire
for justice and political leverage gets muddled. It's our liturgy of politics
and race and media. The direction is
inevitable, running like water in a dry riverbed after a thunderstorm.
But for this one, the direction has changed. There were no ministers on TV.
And police say this is not a hate crime.
Perhaps it's because the Trumblays are white, from southwest suburban
Burbank. The man charged with the attack is Thomas Cooper, 19, an
African-American from the South Side.
Ask yourself. How would it be if the races were reversed? If a white man
jumped out of a car and cut down a black father and daughter with a club in
front of the police station in the Daleys' ancestral neighborhood?
"The media would be different, the politics would be different, City Hall
would be full of protests and everything. But it's not that way for my
brother and niece, is it?" Trumblay asked.
He didn't expect an answer.
Trumblay is also bothered by newspaper and TV reports that robbery was the
motive. Robbery would be politically palatable.
But it wasn't robbery. Prosecutors said Monday that Cooper told them he
attacked the Trumblays because he was angry over girlfriend problems.
"The Sun-Times said it was robbery," Peter Trumblay said. "But you don't rob
people in a crowd with a table leg across the street from a police station,
do you?"
Bob Benjamin, spokesman for Cook County State's Atty. Richard Devine, said
there was no evidence it was a hate crime, which is a felony. The man with
the table leg didn't say much.
"You can't just say because the attacker is of one race and the victim is
another, that it's a hate crime," Benjamin said. "Everything I've heard to
this point doesn't have him saying anything." [...]
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