In July 1987, they had a letter published in
The Jersey Journal stating that they would take any means necessary to drive the Indians out of Jersey City: "I'm writing about your article during July about the abuse of Indian People. Well I'm here to state the other side. I hate them, if you had to live near them you would also. We are an organization called the Dotbusters. We have been around for 2 years. We will go to any extreme to get Indians to move out of Jersey City. If I'm walking down the street and I see a Hindu and the setting is right, I will hit him or her. We plan some of our most extreme attacks such as breaking windows, breaking car windows, and crashing family parties. We use the phone books and look up the name Patel. Have you seen how many of them there are? Do you even live in Jersey City? Do you walk down
Central avenue and experience what like to be near them: we have and we just don't want it anymore. You said that they will have to start protecting themselves because the police cannot always be there. They will never do anything. They are a weak race and mentally. We are going to continue our way. We will never be stopped." Multiple racial incidents from vandalism to assault followed. Later that month, a group of youths attacked Navroze Mody, an Indian
Parsi (
Zoroastrian) man after he had left the Gold Coast Café with his friend. Mody fell into a coma and died four days later. The four convicted of the attack were Luis Acevedo, Ralph Gonzalez and Luis Padilla, who were convicted of aggravated assault; and William Acevedo, who was convicted of simple assault. The attack was with fists and feet and with an unknown object that was described as either a baseball bat or a brick, and occurred after members of the group, which was estimated as being between ten and twelve youths, had surrounded Mody and taunted him for his baldness as either "Kojak" or "Baldie". Mody lost the case; the court ruled that the attack had not been proven a
hate crime, nor had there been proven any malfeasance by the police or prosecutors of the city. The Dotbusters were primarily based in New York and New Jersey and committed most of their crimes in Jersey City. Multiple young men and women were attacked and harassed near Central Avenue in the
Jersey City Heights area during the period of 1975–1993 by the group whom some say was based out of a Hopkins Avenue, Jersey City, home. Details are somewhat clouded on whom and what the gang actually went after, but a number of accounts of homes being burglarized and men being attacked in the middle of night have been recorded. Up until 1989, it seemed like a one-way battle until small groups of Indians began to fight back physically all over the state and outlying boroughs of
New York City. A number of perpetrators have been brought to trial for these assaults. Although tougher anti-hate crime laws were passed by the
New Jersey Legislature in 1990, the attacks continued, with 58 cases of hate crimes against Indians in New Jersey reported in 1991. made light of the use of a related epithet, "dot heads", in nearby
Edison in the 1980s. The New Jersey-raised philosopher Falguni A. Sheth mentioned her mother's harassment by "Dotbusters", and subsequent indifference of the
New Jersey State Police (NJSP), in an interview with
The New York Times. == See also ==