NEW YORK (AP) — A spate of attacks on gay men in New York, including a killing in the heart of one of its most gay-friendly neighborhoods, is stirring up anxiety, disbelief and outrage heading into what is usually a time of celebration.
In the wake of last weekend's deadly shooting on a street in Greenwich Village, officials said Monday that police would increase their presence there and in nearby neighborhoods through the end of June, gay pride month.
A group that combats anti-gay violence planned to fan out to various areas on Friday nights through June to talk to people about safety. And public schools are being asked to hold assemblies or other discussions of hate crimes and bullying, before summer break.
City officials, gay-rights advocates and others were marching to the shooting scene Monday evening to denounce a rise in hate crime reports in a city that generally sees itself as a capital of diversity and tolerance.
"I don't know why it feels like we have taken a step backward, but that is the case, and what we're going to do with that is push forward," said City Council Speaker Christine Quinn — the first openly gay person to hold the post.
Officials and advocates can't pinpoint a reason for the recent rash of attacks, or even whether it reflects more violence or more reporting of it. Police called the killing of Mark Carson early Saturday a hate crime.
In announcing plans for additional police attention, Quinn said she thought anti-gay crime "got to a level of violence I thought was behind us."
The city and especially the Village have long been seen as beacons for gay people. The gay rights movement crystallized in the Village in June 1969, when a police raid at the Stonewall Inn touched off a riot and demonstrations that came to symbolize gays' resistance to being relegated to society's shadows.
Yet gay-bashing has continued to flare up in New York at times in recent years. In one particularly sinister case, three men connected with a 28-year-old man online in 2006, lured him to a rest stop off a Brooklyn highway with a promise of a date and mugged him, chasing him into traffic; he was hit and killed.
In 2010, authorities said Bronx gang members beat and tortured four people in an anti-gay rage, two men were accused of a gay-bashing beating at the Stonewall Inn itself and a man spewed homophobic insults while throwing a punch at another Village bar — all assaults that happened within little more than a week.
NYPD to up presence after bias killing of gay man
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