Tuesday, October 19, 2010

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Arrest in Two More West Village Gay Bar Attacks

Ty’s, Julius’ incidents follow assaults at Stonewall Inn and in Chelsea, horrific crimes in the Bronx

Published: Tuesday, October 19, 2010 6:05 PM CDT
BY PAUL SCHINDLER 
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A 45-year-old Queens man has been charged in two attacks, just ten minutes apart, in two West Village gay bars, the second and third such incidents in Greenwich Village gay establishments in the past two weeks.

Frederick Giunta has been arraigned on charges of assault in the third degree as a hate crime and attempted robbery in the third degree in the two incidents.

Giunta is alleged to have grabbed the wallet of a 31-year-old Brooklyn man and punched him in the face outside of Ty’s, a bar at 114 Christopher Street, between Bedford and Bleecker Streets, at 5:30 p.m. on October 11.

The police say that ten minutes later, at Julius’ bar, about three blocks away at 159 West Tenth Street at Waverly Place, the suspect punched Greg Davis, a 38-year-old African-American Chelsea man who is a bartender there, while yelling at him, “What are you going to do, you fucking nigger? You are a fucking faggot.”

Giunta was arrested on October 15 and arraigned the following day.

Two Staten Island men were arrested in connection with an October 3 assault on a patron at the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street, where the modern gay rights movement gained full steam in the wake of a June 1969 police raid. Julius’ is the city’s oldest gay bar still in business.

According to a statement from the New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project (AVP), the NYPD said Giunta has “a known history of luring gay men with the intent to rob and injure them,” a characterization that City Council Speaker Christine Quinn echoed.

A law enforcement source told Gay City News that Giunta pleaded guilty to a 2002 charge that after leaving the Rawhide bar in Chelsea with one of its patrons, he stole the man’s wallet. That source said Giunta served jail time for that crime.

The NYPD would not comment on the suspect’s criminal record.

“This most recent attack underscores our need to stop the hate speech and anti-LGBTQ vitriol that results in this kind of attack,” Sharon Stapel, AVP’s executive director, said in a written statement. “It is unacceptable that perpetrators of anti-LGBTQ violence feel emboldened to come into any neighborhood, including gay-friendly neighborhoods, and attack LGBTQ people because of who we are.”

Quinn credited the suspect’s arrest to “quick action” by the NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Force.

“Tragically, this is just the most recent in a series of hate crimes to strike our city and neighborhoods in recent weeks,” the speaker said. “This pattern of attacks reminds us that we must redouble our efforts to combat hate, and be on our guard against potential future incidents.

On October 19, Stapel and Quinn were joined at the LGBT Community Center on West 13th Street by other elected officials, NYPD officials, and representatives from Julius’, Ty’s, and the nightlife industry generally for an “emergency” meeting about the recent attacks.

At a press conference prior to that meeting, Quinn said that the gathering was called to show that “we don’t want to take them lying down.”

Paul Seres, the president of the New York Nightlife Association, said, “This is not just an LGBT problem, it is a New York City problem.”

Davis, the bartender assaulted at Julius’, said, “There comes a time when each of us has to stand up… No one has the right to come in and make us uncomfortable there or anywhere in the city.”

In the October 3 Stonewall incident, 21-year-old Matthew Francis and 17-year-old Christopher Orlando have been charged with hate crime assault and weapon possession charges for an early morning attack on Ben Carver, a Washington, DC, gay man who was a patron at the bar.

Andrew Jackson, a 20-year-old Chelsea man, has been charged with hate crime assault and gang assault in connection with an attack on three gay men at Ninth Avenue and 25th Street in Chelsea on October 1. Two other suspects are still being sought.

In the Chelsea, Stonewall, and Ty’s attacks, victims were briefly hospitalized.

The recent gay bashings in Manhattan, however, have been overshadowed by brutal anti-gay assaults in the Bronx. There, eleven men have been arrested in three separate attacks on October 3, during which the victims were kidnapped, assaulted, tortured, and sodomized. Those arrested face a wide array of charges, including unlawful imprisonment, sexual abuse, assault, and robbery as hate crimes.

At the October 19 press conference, out lesbian West Village Assemblywoman Deborah Glick spoke to the broader cultural climate affecting hate violence.

“During a heated election year, some of the rhetoric… has fueled those who are perhaps insecure and who are angry [to] take out their frustrations on the LGBT community,” she said.

Asked later whether recent anti-gay remarks made by Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino — who warned against school children being “brainwashed” about homosexuality and criticized his Democratic opponent, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, for having taken his daughters to a gay pride parade — fit into that category, Quinn acknowledged that a “100 percent” causal connection can never be made.

But, she said, “It is hard to separate those statements from what’s going on. They are in part responsible for everything that’s going on.”

Statistics over several decades from groups ranging from the AVP to the FBI, Quinn said, clearly establish a relationship between periods of harsh anti-gay public rhetoric and hate-motivated attacks on the LGBT community.

The evening before, prior to AVP’s annual Courage Awards ceremony, Stapel told reporters, “Hate speech gives people license. I think there’s a direct connection.”

Asked, during the same event, whether Paladino’s comments could lead to anti-gay attacks, Governor David Paterson said, “They contribute to the climate of violence if they are unchecked.”

The governor credited Republican State Chairman Edward Cox and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani for calling out Paladino over his comments. Paterson noted, however, that during the flap over Paladino’s comments, the GOP gubernatorial hopeful never said a word about the rash of anti-gay violence in the city.


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