The New York Times-20080127-Graffiti Examined In Brooklyn

Return to: The_New_York_Times-20080127

Graffiti Examined In Brooklyn

Full Text (274  words)

Detectives in the police hate crimes unit are investigating the appearance of racist graffiti in two elevators near the chambers of Diana A. Johnson, a Brooklyn Surrogate's Court judge, the authorities said Saturday.

Judge Johnson, a former State Supreme Court justice, was elected in November as the first black Surrogate's Court judge in Kings County. Surrogate's Court hears cases involving the probate of wills, the administration of estates and adoptions.

The police said that members of Judge Johnson's staff discovered the graffiti on Thursday. No arrests have been made.

Marking property with graffiti is normally a misdemeanor, punishable by a year or less in jail, but is prosecuted as a hate crime with a more severe sentence when racial epithets are used. The authorities said the graffiti at the Surrogate's Court, 2 Johnson Street, contained pejorative and racially charged language.

Judge Johnson's election last year came after a hotly contested Democratic primary in which she defeated another black candidate, ShawnDya L. Simpson, a Civil Court judge and a former Brooklyn assistant district attorney. In a heavily Democratic borough, victors in primary races for judgeships are all but certain to win general elections, as Judge Johnson did in November.

But the race provoked tensions, since the Brooklyn Democratic organization and its leader, Assemblyman Vito J. Lopez, endorsed Judge Simpson. Several black leaders, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, backed Judge Johnson, who won the party's nomination with 60 percent of the vote. Surrogate's Courts in Brooklyn and other boroughs have long been known as sources of patronage, funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to lawyers who serve as guardians in thousands of estate cases.