Lakewood, NJ - NAACP Asking To Reclassify A Bias Incident As A Bias Crime

Lakewood, NJ - A black 15-year-old boy, Jamarr Dickerson took a shortcut through an alley behind some houses near Lawrence Avenue in Lakewood, NJ on his way to a friend's house when 43-year-old Elchonon Zimmerman, who lives on Lawrence Avenue, told him that he was on private property and tried to take the youth's picture with his cell phone camera.
A crowd of white men gathered around the boy and uttered a series of racial slurs, the local NAACP alleges. The men said, among other slurs, that black youth did not belong in a predominantly Jewish section of Lakewood, and a scuffle ensued and when a patrolman arrived, he found Zimmerman kneeling on the youth's back. Dickerson was treated and released from the hospital for injuries that he said included cuts on his neck and shoulder and some bruises. Dickerson said he also had a shoe print on his right arm.

Now the local NAACP branch wants the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office to take over the investigation, and they are calling the case a bias crime because the teenager is black.
But the county office declined to usurp Lakewood police, citing a standard policy of assisting police departments with bias allegations. "The local department is conducting the investigation," Assistant Prosecutor Martin Anton said. "The reports are being sent to us and we review the material as we receive it."

Warren A. Sherard, NAACP branch president, said that the case should be taken over by the prosecutor's office "or even perhaps a federal prosecutor." "The Lakewood Police Department is a very professional organization, but the circumstances surrounding this case are sensitive enough to warrant some outside help," Sherard said.

Zimmerman was charged with simple assault.
Public Safety Director Al Peters said "We did file a bias incident report," Peters said. "We did not file bias crime charges. It did not fit."
Sherard, though, questioned why only one person has been arrested in connection with the incident when Dickerson reported several men either touched him or uttered racial slurs.
"It is our position that everyone that put their hand on this child or yelled racial slurs at him while he was being assaulted . . . is part of the alleged crime," Sherard said. "We will not be satisfied with the arrest of one lone participant."
Peters countered that no one is coming forward to identify who any of those men are and since Zimmerman is not accused of issuing racial slurs, he does not meet the requirements for bias charges.