At Thomas Hunter Room 302, seemingly relaxed on the semicircle black leather sofa, Ruddy Lubin and Sabrina Lamour are deeply pondering the fate of Abner who is seeking an appropriate legal measure following his alleged beating by police officers last month.
Like the victim, Sabrina and Ruddy are both Haitian immigrants. The two, who are officials of the Haitian Club Hunter College, will discuss Louima’s case at their upcoming club meeting scheduled for next week. If all works out as planned, they said the police-Louima syndrome will be at the top of the club’s agenda. Sabrina, an accounting major and the club’s Treasurer, reacted bitterly to the sadistic event. She called the incident a “total violation of human rights.” She said Louima is not the only Haitian that has suffered from police brutality. “Police brutality has always been around our community” she added. The sophomore believes that even if Louima emerged as a victor in the on-going legal battle against the police, police brutality against minors is difficult to get rid of. “For now we can do nothing other than pray for Louima to recover from his pain,” she said.
Ruddy, a pre-med major and the club’s Vice President, blamed Mayor Giuliani for being partially responsible for the wide-spread police brutality. “I’ll give him little credit for reducing the crime rate in New York. Also, I’ll blame him for giving so much power to the police without sufficient supervision on how they are protecting the public,” he said.
Inevitably, Ruddy and Sabrina are not the only Haitian students hurt by the Louima-police incident. Patrick Noel is deeply touched by the act which hospitalized his fellow Haitian. Patrick ,who is a graduating senior in Psychology, said the alleged police brutality is “humiliating which in effect is an extreme degradation on the black race in general.”
Although shy to speak, Patrick was non-committal over the question of race being the key issue. Nevertheless, he believes the officers concerned acted irrationally against the victim. “They should prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. I don’t want to call them racist, and at the same time I don’t want to believe that this what our so-called police represent.”
Meanwhile, at the legal proceedings, prosecutors say twenty-five year-old
Justin Volpe, one of the accused, ”shoved the blunt end of a bathroom plunger
into Louima’s rectum and mouth, piercing his bladder and breaking his teeth.”
All the accused officers say they are innocent. The officers claiming innocence
have ignited tensions among the black community, particularly in Brooklyn
and other areas where Blacks are concentrated. From protest march to meetings,
Blacks and Latinos have organized around the Louima case, calling for justice.
