September 21, 2004
Bronx man recruits local kids to spread Nazi stickers
Defacing property with swastikas is so common in the city, I can't even track all the incidents on this site. Probably every day or two there is an item in the police blotter about it.
If you've ever wondered whether the incidents are simply random or part of a co-ordinated operation, police have come up with an answer. A Bronx man, T. Zibelli, has been charged with recruiting Morris Park kids to spread Nazi/White Power stickers around the town of Mount Vernon, and getting them to deface a local synagogue.
Were the kids motivated by a misguided sense of racial pride? Apparently not. Zibelli rewarded the kids by giving throwing parties for them involving alcohol and porn videos.
Police found a large cache of hate material in his apartment when they arrested him, and he sports several Nazi-related tattoos. Investigators said he attended KKK meetings (around here?) and is a member of a national neo-Nazi organization.
A local kid says Zibelli was known around the neighborhood as "that Nazi guy," and says Zibelli called him a "race traitor" for dating a Puerto Rican girl.
Zibelli got caught through a little bit of police work: they arrested one of the boys one time, and found a Nazi sticker on him that matched those used in a previous defacement of the synagogue. From there, it wasn't too hard to trace it back to Zibelli.
And what about the origins of Zibelli's hatred? According to the "race traitor" kid, Zibelli got jumped by a bunch of black kids when he was 16, and that motivated him to start hating everybody except people like him.
It's not hard for me to believe Zibelli found a fertile recruiting ground in Morris Park for this kind of thing. I used to teach high school a few blocks from there, and one of my kids who lived in MP once told me, "If a black kid comes into my neighborhood, he gets beat up. That's it." Whether that's true or not, I don't know, but the fact that it's the perception is pretty telling.
Update (9/22/04): NY Post interviews teens involved, who say Zibelli held cross-burning rituals in Pelham Bay Park, which 50 people attended, some in hoods.
categories:
Bronx, Hate Crimes
posted by adm at September 21, 2004 6:32 AM
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