Posts Tagged ‘hate crime’
Sexist Comments of the Week
Last week’s column on ANC commissioners’ bad words, 5C Commissioner Gigi Ransom Censured Over “Potential Hate Crime”, has inspired even more incendiary speech, courtesy of the comments section.
Matt Corrigan, on why ANC personality problems should be checked at the door:
I’m in 5C and do the neighborhood walks with John Salatti. He cannot stand to be around people and not hear his own voice chattering along. When it comes to documenting, looking at things from the neighborhood’s view, keeping drains free of debris, John’s the MAN! I Encourage the public to go on the walks Thursdays @ 7pm. You can learn much about our community. John knows many homeowners by name and is demonsterably saddened when they move. Personally I can’t stand him, but as my ANC he rocks!
5C Commissioner Gigi Ransom Censured Over “Potential Hate Crime”
Commissioner Ransom’s note helped get her censured by her ANC.
Meetings of advisory neighborhood commission 5C are among the most scrupulously documented affairs in the city. Debbie Smith, a Ward 5 resident and former commissioner, has taken to filming the meetings in full from the back of the room, citing “crazy stuff that has been going on lately.” Edgewood resident Michael J. Henderson publishes PDF documents of laptop notes he takes at each monthly meeting. Commissioner Gigi Ransom now sits behind a tape recorder in order to preserve every comment exchanged between commissioners.
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Durval Martins’ Unsolved Murder
Durval Martins (right), with twin brother Pedro.
Durval Martins, a 35-year-old gay man, was murdered in Logan Circle last December. Martins was found, dead in the intersection, with his wallet in his hand. He had been shot multiple times in the head. He had not been robbed. No arrests have been made in Martins’ case.
On Tuesday May 19, Gays and Lesbians Opposed to Violence co-chairs Chris Farris and Todd Metrokin will hold a vigil to raise awareness about potential hate crimes in Washington, D.C., and to “renew focus” on Martins’ murder. Farris and Metrokin submitted the following companion piece detailing the progression of Martins’ case.
On a cold and drizzly night this past December, Durval Martins, a 35-year-old gay man and one of nine children, said good-bye to his friends on 17th Street and started his walk home. He never made it. He was shot to death at the intersection of 11th and Q.
Here is what we know about Durval’s murder:
Gay Crime Log: Fuck Fred Phelps Edition
Yeah . . . get out of our fucking city.
It’s feast or famine over at the Gay Crime Log. The Sexist isn’t sure what she did to anger the Gay Crime Gods, but for the past two weeks, her D.C. police crime report e-mails have been barren. Today, her inbox was blessed with a mammoth three weeks of anti-trans hate crimes, costly club hook-ups, and anti-Fred Phelps action.
DOUBLE MOTIVE. “On Sunday, March 15, 2009, at approximately 2 a.m., two adult male victims reported they were robbed at gunpoint by three suspects. During the robbery, one of the suspects referred to one of the victims using a homophobic epithet. The victims received minor injuries. The suspects were described as black males, in their early 20’s. Two of the suspects wore their hair in plaits.”
YOU HAVE TO GO HOME, AND YOU CAN’T STAY HERE. “On Tuesday, March 17, 2009 at approximately 5 p.m., members of the Second District were dispatched to the area of Dupont Circle for a possible assault. Upon arrival, officers located an elderly male at the nearby bus stop. He was disoriented and possibly intoxicated. He was accompanied by another male, who advised he was attempting to get his friend home from the local bar. The two began to argue. The elderly male was transported home.”
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Gay Crime Log: Clubbing In Da Club Edition
Domestic violence victim leaves boyfriend, finds bus
The GLLU, MPD’s Gay and Lesbian Liason Unit, serves the District’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender communities. Last week in police activity related to the GLBT community—including a domestic violence victim who takes refuge in a bus, and a man who clubs his boyfriend while in da club—below.
SURPRISE VISIT. MONDAY, MARCH 9 AT 11:40 PM. Members of the Fifth District responded to a hotel located in the 600 block of New York Avenue, N.E. for a destruction of property complaint. Upon arrival, the officers discovered a large window had been shattered and identified the individual who did the damage. He was arrested. Further investigation revealed the incident was motivated by a domestic dispute between the arrest subject and two other men staying at the hotel.
GLB Against T: Who’s Man Enough to Escape a Beating?
Bitch and Hormone: Gender identity gets worked over in bar fight.
When Mitch Graffeo entered Dupont’s Fab Lounge shortly before closing on Feb. 28, he hadn’t been to a lesbian club in more than a decade. Graffeo, 40, was only stopping in to pick up a friend, 29-year-old Jamie, at the conclusion of the gay bar’s weekly lesbian night. Graffeo and Jamie, both transgender men, were two of only a handful of men in a club full of women. As the lights went up, a group of women took a sudden interest in Jamie. Slim and boyish, Jamie had only recently begun to transition from female to male, and they wanted to know what he was.
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The Week in GLBT Police Activity: Delete Those Photos Edition
The GLLU, MPD’s Gay and Lesbian Liason Unit, serves the District’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender communities. A round-up of the past week’s crime reports—including missing victims, fraudulent sexual partners, and a couple club fights—below.
GRABBED, ONE MONTH LATER. FEB. 3, 2009. A man contacted the GLLU to report an assault from way back on Jan. 16, 2009. At 16th and K Sts. NW, the man says, “he was grabbed in a sexual manner by another male.” Despite the time lapse, “the suspect has been identified and an affidavit in support of an arrest warrant will be presented to the United States Attorney’s Office.”
MISSING VICTIM. FEB. 4, 2009, AT 8 P.M. A female called the GLLU “seeking assistance with retrieving her personal property from her former residence.” She had broken up with her girlfriend, she said, and was moving out. When the GLLU arrived however, “the victim was not present and has not returned phone calls attempting to reschedule a time to retrieve her property and interview her regarding any violence in the relationship.”
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Guilty Plea in Georgetown Gay Bashing Case
On Oct. 3, 19-year-old Ruddad Abdulgader approached two men at the C&O Canal, shouted homophobic epithets at them, and assaulted one of them in the face with a bottle. He pleaded guilty to “felony assault with bias intent” and “possession of a prohibited weapon” yesterday, reports Lou Chibbaro Jr. for the Washington Blade. Adbulgader and another man were arrested following the incident last month.
Another Hate Crime: Gay Bar Assault
Lou Chibbaro Jr. reports for The Blade on D.C.’s most recent hate crime. Two customers leaving the D.C. Eagle, a New York Ave. gay bar, were assaulted last Friday “by a group of men shouting anti-gay names,” Chibbaro writes.
“The victims, who state they were walking through a group of 6 black males, were punched and called homophobic names,” [Special Liason Unit Commander Brett] Parson said in an e-mail alert.
“No robbery was announced and there was no altercation prior to the attack. Neither victim suffered visible injuries,” he said.
He said the attackers fled north on 7th Street. No arrests have been made in the incident and police have no suspects, Parson said.
Unlike the Tony Hunter case, which also concerned an assault near a D.C. gay bar, this incident is being classified by MPD as a hate crime.
The Death of Tony Hunter
On the books, it’s “Voluntary Manslaughter.” To activists, it’s a “Hate Crime.”
D.C. didn’t know much about Tony Randolph Hunter when police found his body, “lying supine on the ground” with a “laceration on the back of his head,” near Shaw’s BeBar on the night of Sept. 7. When police initially classified the 37-year-old Maryland man’s beating as a potential hate crime, they did so based on the few details they could ascertain about the victim: who he was and where he was going. The assailants, police reasoned, may have been acting on the same basic information—that Hunter was gay and headed to a gay bar—in an attack that had no immediately apparent motive.
In police reports, descriptions of suspects similarly lack specifics. In the case of Tony Hunter, the report identified the suspects as four black males between the ages of 19 and 22, dressed in blue jeans and T-shirts. Other recent attacks against gays produce similar descriptors. In the July 13 beating of Todd Metrokin, the assailants were described as black men between the ages of 17 and 21. In a Sept. 27 incident in Dupont, a gay couple dodged the word “faggot”—and a heaved brick—from a black man they later identified as a security guard at the Metropole.
