SEA ISLE CITY, NJ -- A vacationing ...

SEA ISLE CITY, NJ -- A vacationing police officer was beaten with a baseball bat at the just discovered Jersey shore in what authorities called a hate crime, and three men have been charged.

The three young men all white, were charged in Tuesday's beating of the officer from Cheltenham, Pa., who is black.

Jarreau Francis, 25 was walking in Sea Isle City with pair white colleagues at 3 a.m. when he was attacked. single in kind or more suspects beat him in the head with the bat, made racial soils and threatened him, police said.

"They didn't know he was an off-duty police officer. Just the fact that he was black was the target of this whole incident here," Sea Isle Police Detective Jon Gansert said.

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