Fairer Policing in Suffolk County Five years after the killing of Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorean immigrant, fueled an outcry in Suffolk County, N.Y., the Justice Department and the county police department have reached a tentative agreement to settle an investigation of discriminatory policing in immigrant communities there. Mr. Lucero was stabbed by teenagers who had made a sport of hunting and harassing Latino men in the waterfront village of Patchogue. The attack exposed not just a frightening strain of anti-immigrant violence in a seemingly placid part of suburban Long Island but also an appalling pattern of inaction and ineptitude by the county police. Mr. Lucero's death spurred immigrants to come forward to say that officers regularly brushed off reports of harassment and abuse and discouraged them from filing complaints. An investigation by the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division found that officers had routinely misclassified likely bias attacks as mere "youth disturbances," fostering a climate in which hate crimes went unreported. Though several other Latinos had told the police of being assaulted by the very men who killed Mr. Lucero, nothing was ever done until after that fatal attack. The agreement announced last Tuesday calls for new policies on training, accountability and outreach to Latinos. The County Legislature should approve the agreement, to get Suffolk moving beyond the dismal place it was five years ago when the county executive at the time, Steve Levy, was a national anti-immigrant firebrand, stoking resentment and fear, and Suffolk was notorious for its immigrant-hostile politics and abusive immigration raids. There have been exemplary efforts at community reconciliation since the Lucero killing by people like the mayor of Patchogue, Paul Pontieri, who has resolutely built bridges between Latino and Anglo neighbors. But it took a federal civil-rights investigation to prod the police department to change its ways. It will take close scrutiny by the community, immigrants, advocates and residents to make sure these reforms stick.