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Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
April 5, 1998, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section 14; Page 7; Column 3; The City Weekly
Desk
LENGTH: 429 words
HEADLINE: NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: CHELSEA;
Group Asks Why 2 Similar Attacks Are Defined Differently
BYLINE: By DAVID KIRBY
BODY:
The debate over what constitutes a hate crime is
heating up since two recent attacks against gay men in Manhattan. Although
anti-gay slurs were used in both incidents,
one is being treated as a possible bias case and one is not.
The widely reported stabbing of a gay man on Wednesday
morning in the West Village will be investigated by the police bias unit.
The police said Colin Brown, 22, was stabbed
by Robert Cockrel, 18, during a scuffle that began when Mr. Brown heard
the suspect's younger sister use the word "faggot." Mr. Brown was hospitalized
with a punctured liver.
But an assault on Feb. 8 in Chelsea was not classified
as bias, though the same language was used. In that incident, Dennis Beauchemin,
41, was walking home from a local gay bar with
a friend at 4:30 A.M. when a van ran a red light at 10th Avenue and 23d
Street, nearly hitting them.
"I said something like, 'Hey, watch it!' " and we
walked away," Mr. Beauchemin said. But the van, with three men inside,
followed them. "The door opened and they started
yelling 'faggots' and throwing bottles at us," Mr. Beauchemin said.
He fled toward his apartment on West 25th Street,
thinking his friend was right behind him, but at his building, he realized
his friend was not there and went looking for
him. "Then I saw the van coming around the corner," he said.
Two men grabbed Mr. Beauchemin. "One guy said, 'I'll
get you, faggot!' and smashed a full beer bottle in my head," he said.
"Then they started kicking me." The bottle crushed
his brow and part of his cheekbone, and he lost his left eye.
Mr. Beauchemin said he cannot undergo reconstructive
surgery because he is H.I.V.-positive and his white-blood-cell count is
too low.
The police did not classify the attack as a bias crime
because it began as a traffic argument. But advocates for gay causes say
bias is a question of whether, not when, hatred
is expressed.
"The patrol guidebook says any crime motivated in
whole or in part by bias is a bias crime," said Christine Quinn, executive
director of the New York City Gay and Lesbian
Anti-Violence Project. "We have to clarify that with the police." She
said both attacks arose from "homophobic attitudes."
"Take away the victims' perceived sexual orientation,"
she said, "and there's little to indicate the perpetrators would've acted
so violently."
Ms. Quinn's group is organizing a march on Wednesday
from Christopher Street to West 25th Street to call for a change in guidelines.
The Police Department did not respond to a request
for comment. DAVID KIRBY
GRAPHIC: Photo: Dennis Beauchemin lost his left eye
after an assault with a bottle. (Jack Manning/The New York Times)
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: April 5, 1998
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