Racial Slurs

A 51-year-old Anne Arundel County employee was sentenced yesterday to 10 days in jail 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 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 let Mr. Bell of the 1400 block of Maryland Ave. in Severn serve his sentence on work-release.

Troubled by what has been called "a climate of intolerance," an angry group of black parents in southern Anne Arundel County called school board officials to a community meeting last night to address reports of racial slurs directed at their children and public references to lynching at Southern High School in Harwood. Les Stanton, school board human relations specialist, attended the meeting at Carter United Methodist Church in Friendship, which was attended by about 50 parents and students.

A series of racial disturbances at South River High School has prompted Anne Arundel County school officials to suspend more than a dozen students during the past year and provide sensitivity training schoolwide, school system officials said at a briefing yesterday. Two recent incidents involving graffiti prompted county police to investigate several students and offer a $500 reward for information leading to arrests and convictions, officials said. In the first incident, in the middle of last month, someone spray-painted graffiti on a school stairwell threatening the lives of black students.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland has filed a discrimination suit against Talbot County, claiming that county roads officials have engaged in "an unbroken pattern of racial discrimination, segregation and harassment" against blacks since the department was created in 1987.The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, says County Manager Blenda W. Armistead investigated racial complaints from three black employees last year and created a monitoring system to halt racial slurs that were routinely aimed at them.

The Baltimore state's attorney's office yesterday dropped assault charges against a city police officer who had been accused of beating a man and shouting racial slurs while off duty last month outside a waterfront bar.Officer Richard Heymann, 25, had been charged with battery and racial harassment against O'Dell John Lewis, 28, of Columbia. Lewis, who is black, said he had been assaulted by Heymann, who is white, as he walked by the Parrot Island waterfront bar near Fells Point about 1 a.m. May 11.Assistant State's Attorney Elizabeth A. Ritter said that an investigation by the state's attorney's office and the Police Department turned up insufficient evidence to pursue the charges against Heymann and the assault countercharges that Heymann and a third man, Gregory Fritzges, filed against Lewis.

Kenneth E. Hardy, 45, a former college professor who challenged his employer's decision not to rehire him after a student complained about a classroom discussion of racial slurs, died Saturday of lung cancer in Louisville, Ky. His widow, Adreinne Regnier, a professor and coordinator of Jefferson Community College's philosophy department, said she would continue with her husband's lawsuit charging that the college took his job for using epithets in...

Vandals left their mark on Patuxent Valley Middle School during the holiday weekend, covering the building with blue and yellow spray paint.The graffiti -- including obscene remarks, references to marijuana and racial slurs -- was discovered at the Jessup school about 3:30 p.m. Christmas Eve, police said.More than two dozen markings were found on some windows and most of the exterior brick walls.The vandals included a holiday message in their graffiti, writing: "Deck the school with lots of spray paint, fa la la la la la la."

It's a heck of a way to have a class reunion.Five former sixth-graders and their teacher at Woodbridge Middle School in Virginia have filed suit against ABC and the Walt Disney Co., claiming they've been defamed by the use of their school photos on the Saturday morning kids show "Mrs. Munger's Class."The lawsuit, filed this week in Los Angeles, says the TV show prominently features school photos of the plaintiffs taken in 1975. Through computer animation, the photos are brought to life and the mouths are moved to make humorous comments.

A fire accompanied by racial graffiti at a Brooklyn Park home early New Year's Day is being investigated as a possible hate crime, according to Anne Arundel County police and fire officials. Fire Department Lt. Cliff Kooser said the blaze at the house in the 300 block of Church Street caused an estimated $75,000 in damage, and that "it's a possibility it could be incendiary. " Kooser and police spokesman Justin Mulcahy said the graffiti was on walls and the agencies were working together to determine if it was a hate crime.

New trial is rejected in rape-murder case A Baltimore Circuit Court judge has rejected a request for a new trial from a Baltimore man who says that new DNA testing clears him and a co-defendant of the rape and murder of a young woman two decades ago. In a ruling dated Aug. 24 and released yesterday by city prosecutors, Judge Marcella A. Holland wrote that while the DNA evidence shows that James Thompson Jr. did not commit the rape, it "does not show...