Shoot the Hispanic target was the title of an email sent by a Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) boss to other supervisors at the agency.

The message consisted of a video of two agents at a police practice firing range. Laughing uproariously, one of the agents fires while he shouts an obscene word in Spanish.

The supervisor who sent the email also wrote the message: “For your enjoyment,” according to one of the lawyers who yesterday filed a suit in federal court against the MTA, in which the video is included as exemplary evidence of the alleged hostile environment directed against Hispanics and African-Americans among Authority police.

The suit is filed in the name of 10 agents who declared that the agency discriminated against them in several ways, such as blocking their promotions, denying them the opportunity to earn the same salary as white agents in the same position, and imposing more disciplinary measures on them than on other agents.

There were also direct insults, several of the parties to the suit declared yesterday in a press conference.

According to Marshall Mazyck, one of the police officers represented in the suit, when he discussed the possibility of a transfer with a supervisor, “what he said to me was, 'We don't want any Blacks in this unit.'”

Another agent, Michael Benjamin, said that he too was insulted by one of his superiors in the midst of a discussion between the two of them about how to control traffic.

“To the sergeant it seemed like the traffic was congested. The sergeant thought it was my fault that traffic was congested,” said Benjamin. In the middle of the argument, the superior called him a nigger.

“I felt humiliated,” said Benjamin, adding that it was the first time in his life that someone had insulted him that way. When Benjamin lodged a complaint, “they took reprisals against me, and they called me crazy,” said the agent. Benjamin said they even took him off patrol duty for a time and sent him to counseling.

In spite of the fact that he had a “satisfactory” job rating, agent Blake Willett had to wait 18 years before he was promoted to detective, according to the suit. And when Willett complained about the hostile work environment, a captain told him, “Your problem is you're big. You're Black. You're intimidating. And your daddy didn't work here.”

Willett, according to the suit, was posted to work in Penn Station with a group of white detectives, one of whom commented, “Now the office is going to be full of chicken bones.” When Willett and another agent complained, they were transferred to another less desirable post, according to the suit, while the white officers “were not disciplined.”

Detective Lilian Alvarado, who has worked for the MTA for 26 years, said, “From the beginning they isolated me and stigmatized me.” According to the court papers, Alvarado was denied overtime pay that was granted to other detectives, and was more closely supervised than white detectives were.

“I always tell my daughters that if you work hard, you'll get ahead,” said Alvarado. But in the MTA, in spite of hard work, “they excluded me and made me feel like I was incompetent.”

One of the lawyers, Norman Siegel, said that when training sessions necessary for advancement were offered, “African-American and Latino employees were not notified.”

In a statement to the press in response to the suit, the MTA stated that it has a “total” obligation “to provide a work place free of any sort of discrimination or harassment.”

“We will study the legal documents thoroughly when we receive them, and we will respond in an appropriate manner,” added the statement.