5 Things to Know: Honoring Robert Reecks

Suffolk County lost one of its finest this past weekend, when Det. Sgt. Robert Reecks, former commander of the Suffolk County Police Department Hate Crime, His wake will be held Tuesday and Wednesday at

During his tenure on the hate crimes unit, Reecks looked to find justice for victims of a host of hate crimes on Long Island, some that made national headlines.

To honor Reecks, we offer five instances where Reecks served his community by fighting hate.

1. Reecks led the bias crime units when perhaps the most notorious hate crime on Long Island, the murder of Ecuadorean immigrant Marcelo Lucero in Patchogue in 2008. Lucero was stabbed to death in a racially motivated attack by a gang of white teenagers.

2. In 2009, a landscaper was arrested by Reeck’s unit after police said he tried to run over a pair of Muslim women at a Smithtown gas station. According to an Associated Press story, the landscaper told cops, “They don’t belong here.”

3. In 2004, the hate crimes unit was called in to investigate two burning crosses that were set ablaze outside an interracial couple’s Lake Grove home. It was the first time a burning cross was reported on L.I. since 1997.

4. Reecks unit didn’t discriminate by age, arresting a 16-year-old in 2005 for allegedly spray-painting anti-Semitic phrases and swastikas on a boarded-up multiplex in Brookhaven. It took cops two years to track down the suspect.

5. Reecks was even called to action in 2005 when a statue of a Wise Man was stolen from a nativity scene in Holbrook.

Info according to Daily News reports.