Event

DEPUTIZED

Panel discussion and reception with Long Island residents, immigration activists, and Director-Producer Susan Hagedorn

In a deceptively peaceful Long Island town just before midnight on November 8, 2008, 37-year-old Ecuadorian immigrant Marcelo Lucero is assaulted by a group of teenaged boys cruising the streets "beanerhopping," a term used to describe the decade-long ritual of attacking Latinos for sport. The adolescent "game" comes to an end with the fatal stabbing of Lucero, exposing a thinly veiled systemic intolerance for immigrants. Seventeen-year-old Jeffery Conroy, a popular high school athlete, is sentenced to 25-years for a hate crime, while the other teens get 5 to 8-years behind bars. The local government, the press and the community agree that the problem is solved and justice has been served. Not satisfied with easy answers, Deputized delves deeply into the complex environment in which teens pumped with adrenaline, aggression, alcohol and anger target vulnerable Latinos perceived to be undocumented. Through raw and honest interviews with family members on both sides, Jeffrey Conroy and the other teens charged, their high school classmates and victims of "beaner-hopping," Deputized dissects the anti-immigration messages and rhetoric flooding the community and raises
the question: Were the teens deputized by the forces within their community to commit such a senseless act? Filmed over three years,Deputized doesn't take sides or cast judgment. The fully bilingual documentary explores the crime from a variety of perspectives,
probing the lives of the victim, the boys and the socio-political conditions that brought them together.