Hate–From Their Porch To Our Door

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Stephen Ames Berry

On November 11th, someone spray-painted our front door with hate graffiti. Videos of previous criminal trespassing suggest it was one of the several teens who hang out at Herkimer drug thug Kim Vargas’ 328 Pleasant Avenue, adjacent to our house. Surveillance videos show Vargas to very much be their den mother, providing them with food and whatever.

Vargas is the mother of 21-year-old Jordan Bormann, charged with a Class D Felony Assault on a 74-year-old neighbor, sent to Albany Medical Center on 9/30 with a brain injury.

Herkimer Monster Mom Kim Vargas
Herkimer Monster Mom Kim Vargas

Thanks to New York bail reform, young Mr. Bormann is at home on an appearance ticket, visible to his neighboring victim (me), hanging out on Vargas’ porch, eating takeout and smoking weed as he awaits trial this Spring.  Confined to home, Jordan has the Lost Boys of the video to keep him company. (And Democrats wonder why they lost seats in New York.)

The hate sprayer is of the age and size of one of the criminal trespassers caught on a previous video, raiding our property from Vargases. His friends call him Lem. (video-3:26)  We’ve seen Lem several times in the driveway of 326-326 ½ Pleasant, the house on the other side of Vargas’. As we walked by there on 11/11, he called my wife a “Crazy fucking bitch.” He might have gone on, but I pointed to my bodycam and he shut up.

Lem - Herkimer criminal trespasser and suspected hate crime perpatrator. Often seen at Kim Vargas' 328 Pleasant Ave.
Lem – Herkimner criminal trespasser and suspected hate crime perpatrator. Often seen at Kim Vargas’ 328 Pleasant Ave.

The sturdy lad doing hate art may also be Chunky Monkey, caught on camera vandalizing one of our security lights—a light Kim Vargas complained often and bitterly about, lighting up her drug trafficking as it did.

Video Timeline

0:01-0:41 The Hate Spraying

0:42-2:16 Previous recent criminal trespass incidents from Vargas’ house.

2:17    Trespasser’s friends on Vargas’ porch encourage him, call him “Lem” as he enters our driveway.

3:37 – End “The guilty flee where no one pursues.” (Proverbs 28:1

This behavior has gone well beyond youthful hijinks and has been reported to the police and the State of New York Attorney General’s Hate Crimes Unit. No one in our family is African American, but several are Jewish. These guys aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed and may confuse a darkly-complected Ashkenazic Jew — my wife–with an African American. Not that they would know what a Jew was. But you don’t need to get your victim’s ethnicity right for it to be a hate crime. For example, I’ve overheard people expressing sympathy for “the old Jew who got beat up in the street.” My wife is Jewish; I’m Icelandic Dane. Doesn’t matter–hate’s hate.

The Herkimer Post is widely read. Lots of folks in this time of change looking for places up here to move to and invest in. If Herkimer doesn’t want the image of a racist community, it needs to track this kid down and charge him.

Sparks Fly! Chunky Monkey Could’ve Died

Author: herkimerblog

This blog is my perspective on dwelling in our small village nestled among beautiful forests, farms and open landscapes. Educated in Israel and the US, I have an MS in Computer Science. My viewpoint has been shaped by world travel, friends and benefactors both strangers and people I know. Linda Kaidan