AP: Black victims of violent crime disproportionately denied aid [Video]

The cold formality of the letter is seared in Debra Long’s memory.

It began “Dear Claimant,” and said her 24-year-old son, Randy, who was fatally shot in April 2006, was not an “innocent” victim. Without further explanation, the New York state agency that assists violent-crime victims and their families refused to help pay for his funeral.

Randy was a father, engaged to be married and studying to become a juvenile probation officer when his life was cut short during a visit to Brooklyn with friends. His mother, angry and bewildered by the letter, wondered: What did authorities see — or fail to see — in Randy?

“It felt racial. It felt like they saw a young African American man who was shot and killed and assumed he must have been doing something …