On May 23, 2009 around 4:45 in the morning my cat woke me up. I immediately became aware that my partner, Ralph, had never come home that night.

When I called him he sounded disoriented, said he was with the police and that they were bringing him home soon. About twenty minutes later I heard a man say "okay, take care, Ralph!" and I ran out onto the porch to see him hobbling, wincing, toward the house, pushing his bike along side, with his face beaten. My first reaction was anger. I didn't know what had happened. As he struggled to stand on his legs he couldn't help but cry...we didn't know at the time but he was putting weight on a tibia that was fractured in three places, with much of the soft tissue behind the tibia and in the knee torn from the bone or ripped.

He had been out late making sure some acquaintances got in this bus safely. They had gone to a casino and some bars. He described his level of intoxication to the police in the emergency room twelve hours later as having been "two sheets to the wind." As he was on his way home he came upon a residence in which a group of men just south of Brady Street were saying some demeaning things to some women on that same property. Ralph sought a way to interfere in the conflict and derail attention from these women by asking them for a cigarette. A conversation ensued which escalated into an argument because Ralph challenged how they had been speaking to the women, and then how they were speaking to him. As it got more heated, they told Ralph to leave and he obliged willingly. However, as Ralph was walking away from these men, he was attacked from behind and held down by one man (Radakovich), and then punched in the face repeatedly by another (Busalacchi). They did this directly in front of their house, so when they were done they just went inside. Two girls across the street shouted to Ralph that they were calling 911, and the police came in record time (because it was on the east side, of course.) Ralph refused an ambulance because he did not have health insurance, so they had a paramedic check to see if his leg was broken and it was not. They put him and his bike in the paddywagon, and dropped him off in front of our house.

Only after I convinced him he needed medical help and solicited my mother for a car ride to hospital did we find out the extent of the damage. We called a police officer to the hospital to report what had happened, since we figured the cops that came to the scene hadn't reported anything. They treated the event like it had been a bar fight. Angry. Drunk. Mutual.

The officer who came to the hospital was in the room when the physician came back to report the extent of the damages to Ralph's body. He said it amounted to substantial battery - a felony. He also told us that the officers who had come to the scene of the crime (which included a sheriff) had completely mishandled the situation, that Ralph should never have been taken home, that he should have been taken right to the hospital regardless of insurance status because an officer is not qualified to determine the extent of the damages and his condition could have worsened in going home and sleeping, especially if he had experienced a concussion (which he fortunately did not.)

Interestingly, as this case progressed, his assigned officer who took the initial report was taken off the case, and switched to another district. We were not able to get an attorney to take the case because they all wanted a copy of the police report, and we were repeatedly told that we would not be allowed access to the police report until the district attorney had settled the case.
Well, interestingly enough, we recently discovered that the man who attacked Ralph from behind and held him down and is thus responsible for most of the damage done to his body, THAT GUY, that guy's father is a sheriff in New Berlin. Yep. Sure thing. And he works at an attorney's office, put that on yr brainy-brain.

So, I pose the age-old question. Police: To serve whom? To protect what?

Additionally, Ralph could not work for two months and didn't have insurance and we were denied any kind of government assistance besides food stamps (which we weren't granted until September when he applied in mid-July). Here are some of rationales offered by various social services as well as the district attorney's office for why they aren't going to do anything:

You were drunk.

You were walking around at four in the morning.

You initiated a conversation.

You accused these men of being "nazis," how do you expect white men to react when you, a brown man, calls them that?

The Criminal Victim's Compensation people pretty much described it like "You were rambling the streets drunk at 4am, initiated an argument with some other drunk guys, and you got punched," totally ignoring his motivation for talking to them at all and the fact that he was attacked by more than one person and that he got punched numerous times after he had already sustained major injuries to his leg that would prevent him from getting up without help FROM BEHIND.



Could this be a hate crime if he hadn't said anything to them? If he had just been attacked from behind, two guys against one, the assailants white and privileged, and the victim brown and passive, would they care about this then? DOES THE FACT THAT HE WAS ATTACKED AFTER SPECIFICALLY TELLING THESE MEN THAT THE TIME FOR WHITE MALES TO FREELY DEHUMANIZE WOMEN AND MINORITIES WAS OVER, does that strike any of these bureaucratic assholes as a clear indication of hatred?

There is a restorative justice intervention scheduled for November 4th. This means there will be no prison for his assailants, but it does mean that they had to admit guilt to avoid prison.

Though I am looking forward to making them pay off the medical bills and the fees incrued on Ralph's bank account and his lost wages while he was put out all summer, I honestly, honestly, honestly can't wait to force these men to have to look into our eyes.