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There can be a silver lining to any ugly situation, and the recent wave of assaults on men of east Indian appearance near the University of New Mexico certainly qualifies as ugly.

The silver lining is not just the arrest of a suspect, Turan Johnson, but rather how the initial responses from the respective law enforcement agencies evolved.

That a segment of this city's population was living for some weeks in virtual lockdown - as the city busily crows about its place in the global village - is unacceptable.

There's a lot to consider here, much of it quite unappealing.

To backtrack, the assaults happened in a very small footprint near the UNM campus, with two reported inside the Frontier Restaurant. Inside! These were beatings where the victim was kicked to the ground.

"As he was kicking them, he was saying, `Namaste,' a Hindi greeting," said Bhavana Upadhyaya, head of the India Students Association. She added without a shred of irony: "It's a peaceful gesture, but used in context of kicking, it became a cultural insult."

The association has about 360 members in Albuquerque, a number that would make most blink. It has an e-mail system to share information; one victim posted the details of his assault there with more following in short order.

The victims were mostly international students at UNM, and what has not been reported to date is a rather unfortunate response by those assigned to protect the vulnerable, namely the UNM campus police and the Albuquerque Police Department.

"I assumed because the assaults were so close to the Frontier, I just needed to talk to the UNM police department, but later found out I had to talk to APD also," Upadhyaya said. "I asked UNM to contact APD, but they did not call."

Upadhyaya, a graduate student pursuing her doctorate in communications, said she discovered quickly how one person's beliefs can run smack up against everyone else's perception. Albuquerque police sent an officer to meet with five victims, and the response, she said, was rather dismissive.

At that point, she said, Albuquerque police did not want to classify the assaults as a hate crime. That position has since changed, and APD should be applauded for that. But the department should also be aware of the level of fear and helplessness created by that initial meeting.

"I had a deep feeling the fear in my community had not been acknowledged. So I started reaching out because this was a hate crime," Upadhyaya said. "We were feeling unsafe as a community walking around."

Where I see a silver lining is the change that Upadhyaya saw in the police response.

"Thankfully, both UNM and APD became supportive and worked very hard with us. APD and UNM reports it now as a hate crime investigation. That's a huge step for us, finally acknowledging this has happened," she said.

And there is some other good to come from this. For us as locals, for foreigners living here, for everyone.

"This incident helped us learn so much. When are our rights lost because of the sheer culture difference, that concerns me about this incident," Upadhyaya said.

"It's not about this one man who we will never see, but how can we prevent these attacks to anyone else. We don't have to search for a pattern. How can we stop this at the beginning?"

That's as good a place to start as any.

Yes, it's easy to say it's just one man, now in jail, but reputations die hard. It's everyone's problem here, like it or not.