The U.S. Justice Department has begun an investigation into allegations of “discriminatory policing” by the Suffolk County (N.Y.) Police Department over how officers responded to reports of crimes against Latinos.
The investigation, announced Monday, will be conducted by the Justice Department’s civil rights division and the local U.S. attorney’s office. It comes about nine months after [...]

Last Nov. 8, Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorian immigrant living in Suffolk County on New York’s Long Island, was murdered in the town of Patchogue. Lucero was attacked by a gang of teenagers calling themselves the Caucasian Crew, who targeted Latino residents as part of a sport they called “beaner-hopping.” In the wake of the murder, [...]

The 1990s saw the rise and fall of the virulently antigovernment “Patriot” movement, made up of paramilitary militias, tax defiers and so-called “sovereign citizens.” Sparked by a combination of anger at the federal government and the deaths of political dissenters at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas, the movement took off in the middle of [...]