Racial Slurs

Third male charged with hate crime in spray-paintings A third person has been charged with malicious destruction of property and violating Maryland's hate-crime law after racial slurs and vulgar phrases were spray-painted on four Mount Airy homes Monday night, state police said yesterday. Justin Eugene Wright, 20, of the 200 block of Watersville Road, Mount Airy, was charged with nine counts of malicious destruction of property and one count of racial or religious harassment, authorities said.

A bout two weeks ago, I was waiting in a "Seven items or fewer" line at Wegmans in Hunt Valley. The woman in front of me had 18 separate items and a variety of difficulties in finding the money in her purse to pay for them. She was waited on for more than seven minutes. After she was finished paying, I said to the person at the register, "Do you all not discourage people who have so many items from using this line? It really is bad policy." The woman who took 18 items to the seven-item limit line was still within earshot and said, "Mind your own business.

POLICE LOG* Elkridge: 6400 block of Route 1: First aid kits and a fire extinguisher were taken from a yard sometime between late July 14 and early Thursday.6300 block of South Hanover Road: A white 1983 Ford van with license tags 22A103 was stolen around 1 p.m. Friday.8800 block of Route 1: A safe was stolen from Avanti's restaurant and its exterior phone lines cut after someone pried open a side door between Saturday and Sunday afternoon.6200 block of Sandpiper: The side door of a construction trailer was pried open, and someone sprayed the entire trailer with Nazi symbols and racial slurs Thursday or Friday morning.

WASHINGTON -- A Baltimore woman claiming she was wrongfully strip searched in a Sam Goody music store at Eastpoint Mall filed suit yesterday against its parent company, a store employee, the shoping center and two of its security guards, seeking a total of $148 million.Donita Garrett, 29, who said she is a Baltimore high school art teacher, alleged that she was subjected to the search in February and that a store employee directed racial slurs and profanity at her and a friend because Ms. Garrett is white and the friend is black.

Vandals defaced four schools and businesses with racial epithets in Howard County in a series of hate incidents over the weekend.The incidents are the most recent to occur in a county whose reputation for racial harmony has been tarnished by a string of such events recently.Since the beginning of this year, police have recorded more than 25 hate incidents. There were 53 racial, religious and ethnic incidents reported last year. The incidents range from a fight involving racial slurs at Glenelg High School to mailing of hate literature to graffiti on school walls.

Danielle and Mohamed Abdelmegid thought they had found a place where they could settle down and rear their two children.But months after the family moved into the Pasadena neighborhood, says Mrs. Abdelmegid, 24, neighbors in the 7700 block of Edgewood Ave. have shouted obscenities and racial slurs at her and her children, destroyed her property and called the county Animal Control to pick up her gray Keeshond dog.Neighbors say the problems have nothing to...

About 60 children and adults demonstrated in front of the Anne Arundel County police headquarters in Millersville yesterday evening, protesting alleged police misconduct during an incident at a Crofton skating rink on Sept. 30.Police are conducting an internal investigation of the complaints of police brutality and the use of racial slurs and profanity during the incident at Skate City in which seven people were arrested.Lt. Ronald Bledsoe, a shift commander at the Western District, is heading the investigation.

A 51-year-old Anne Arundel County employee was sentenced yesterday to 10 days for causing a disturbance at an Odenton restaurant, where he used racial slurs to harass three black women.Edwin D. Bell, who works in the county maintenance garage, pleaded with Circuit Judge Raymond G. Thieme Jr. to keep him out of jail. "Sir, please don't put me in jail, please," he said, his voice choking.The judge agreed to allow Mr. Bell of the 1400 block of Maryland Ave. in Severn to serve his sentence on work-release.

Varsity State adds code of conduct addressing race-baiting Maryland high school athletes have a new code of conduct, prompted by allegations that football players in Cumberland used racial slurs against opposing players during a game last year. Race-baiting was already forbidden but "maybe it doesn't hurt to say so" in the student-athlete handbook, Ned Sparks, executive director of the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association, said Friday. He said the code was added this school year to a "Respect the Game" handbook that is distributed annually to the 4,800 team captains in the association's 192 member schools.

The day after a community meeting called by a group of parents concerned about racial slurs directed at black students and public references to lynchings at Southern High School, the Anne Arundel County school board added two administrators to the school staff, a schools official said yesterday. A math teacher from George Fox Middle School and a pupil personnel worker will begin working as administrators this week to help ease racial tensions at the Harwood school. "They're going to be quasi-administrators to try to establish a rapport with some of the students who feel isolated," said Leslie Stanton, a school board human relations specialist.