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Three teens sought for gay bashing on the Orange Line
By adamg on Sat, 07/16/2011 - 9:20pm
MBTA Transit Police report they are looking for a black male, a Hispanic male and a white female on charges they attacked a man because of his sexual orientation on a State Street Orange Line platform around 10 p.m. on July 10:
The victim was on the northbound platform when an unidentified male # 2 shoved him onto a train as the doors opened because of the victim's sexual orientation. The unidentified male # 2 as well as the individual depicted as # 1 directed several homophobic slurs at the victim after shoving him. The suspects depicted above along with an unidentified female companion, boarded an Orange Line train at State Street Station with the victim and continued to harass him about his sexual orientation. The suspects then fled the train at Haymarket Station.
If caught, they'll be charged with assault and battery and civil-rights violations.
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Comments
So sad
That is such a sad story. Its terrible to think that sort of thing can / does still occur.
terror trains
These punks have overun the T and if they are not gay bashing they are robbing cell phones or terrorizing passengers. Mr davey put your cops on the trains and busses please and you will be a hero to the riding public.
Better yet
Put the National Guard in there. Those are real soldiers who will fight. I like local cops...but they don't want to deal with actual confrontations (for which I certainly don't fault them...most people don't.) Get real fighters into places where people (like these expletives) want to fight.
You wanna trash a gay guy? Let's see how tough you are when a uniformed soldier has you by the shirt collar. We certainly have people within our society who can and will use physical force to right wrongs. Let's get them into places where they're needed. I'm not sure I'm one of them myself...but I appreciate those who are.
ok
Whatever, bro
Don't cry to me when your friend or family member gets assaulted by some ill-mannered teenager.
overreaction
is the worst kind of action. One kid shoves some guy and we need military policing the subway system?
And you think the guy above is being unreasonable?
Maybe we should start with forcing the damn transit police to do their damn job, and you know, ride public transit?
The only thing I've ever seen them do is respond to calls from their cars above ground, park in bus areas, and harass the public 4 at a time with randomly set up, and very ineffective, bag checks once a month.
One kid shoves some guy?
Yeah, that's the only bad thing that's ever happened on the T. Reality is that the Orange Line appears to be overrun with miscreants. Since conventional policing isn't working, let's make like the Israelis and get the military involved in our transportation. You ever see anybody screw around at an Israeli airport? Hell no. I see a guy with a rifle, I'm behaving myself. Let's scare these little (expletives) straight for once.
(No subject)
(No subject)
Can't Quite Agree...
Will, I understand and have a lot of sympathy for your frustration here, but I can't agree. This is a job for the police, not the National Guard. Putting the National Guard in place for incidents such as this is an overreaction - and just to be clear, I'm saying that as a Gay man. A further militarization of our streets cannot be the answer.
The police have a very difficult job. I can say that, I think, because my Uncle was Chief of Police in the city I grew up in, and his son remains with the force. My best friend in college is now a NYC Detective and participated first-hand in the 9/11 cleanup as a patrolman. Having said that, my observations of Greater Boston police in the 3 years I've been here have not been stellar.
How to we get better police? I don't have an answer to that, honestly. The job can be so difficult, and the horrors you see so bad, that maybe its a wonder we have as good of a police force as we do at times.
Maybe the answer is to "create a better society" - a society where we don't put up with this sort of thing. I don't have an exact recipe at all, but we have seen incidents where common citizens have stood up to people like this in the MBTA. My heart always warms to stories like that. I think we do need to take greater individual responsibility for the state of the society around us. I can only hope that should such an opportunity ever arise for me, I'll be up to it.
Both your answer and mine have its dangers, of course. Yours may lead to a society where we look more like Israel or China - armed guards at every corner. Mine could lead to a percentage of people starting to yell, "I'm Batman!" which has its problems as well.
Perhaps the only thing we can agree on is what we have now isn't working as well as we need it to.
I agree that the public needs
I agree that the public needs to take more responsibility. If bystanders spoke up to these kids, they would not be as likely to behave in this manner.
There are definitely parts of
There are definitely parts of Boston where a "bystanders spoke up to these kids" would have the effect of dead bystanders.
You can pontificate all you want about "there's no such thing as a bad kid", until you pass out from loss of blood through those new holes that misguided kid just gave you in your gut.
These kids are total trash.
These kids are total trash. That said, the last thing I want is any kind of military on the street.
Ever looked into becoming a cop?
If you did, you find that young cops are pretty much all vets these days anyway (since veterans have their scores weighted on the police exam, a policy that could arguably lead to its own problems). Given the large amount of recently discharged "real soldiers" in police departments statewide, care to reconsider your comment?
This trio is typical
This trio is typical uneducated trash you see either in Downtown Crossing or the Cambridgeside Ghetto (galler) ia. They will be tax payer supported for the rest of their lives even if they don't do any jailtime
How did they know his sexual orientation?
How did they know his sexual orientation?
Do I smell
... victim-blaming?
I would imagine that the
I would imagine that the victim was wearing something that was not baggy jeans, a tshirt 3 sizes too big and a backwards baseball cap and therefor in their eyes was gay. It would not shock me at all if the victim were not even gay after all of this considering how ignorant many of these teens on the trains are, gay slurs seem to be tossed around quite a bit by these groups.
Not victim blaming, just asking the 5 W's and 1 H of journalism
Asking for answers to the five w's and one h of journalism is now victim blaming? Spare me.
Who?
What?
When?
Where?
How?
Why?
Law is worded to include perceived group identity, I believe
If someone is attacking a stranger while using homophobic slurs, does it really matter whether the victim identifies as gay? Should this person feel less singled out if he wasn't actually gay? Should the guy not actually being gay be a sign to the community that we don't actually have to be worried about gay bashings?
Is the n-word less hurtful screamed at you if you're a dark-skinned Turk rather than of African origin? "Oh, your hatred of me based on my presentation wasn't quite accurate...carry on then..."
And O-FISH-L, I wouldn't expect you to actually get this, but a good portion of LGBT-identified folks present in a way so as to be visible and correctly identified -- pride jewelry, choice of language and mannerisms, trends in dress and grooming that are particular to the community, identification with certain figures who are more popular in the community than elsewhere, etc. Not everyone who's out follows these norms, but a good number do.
"Choice" of language and mannerisms
@eeka, why do LGBTs (or straights, for that matter) need to be "correctly identified" on the T? That statement is beyond bizarre. Is the T a public transportation system or a gay bar on rails?
That said, I agree with you on the fact that a good portion of LGBTs choose language, mannerisms, jewelry and trends in dress and grooming particular to the LGBT community. It being their choice, unlike race, sex, handicaps, there should be no special protection under the Civil Rights laws. Thomas Paine's words still hold true, "what we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly." For homosexuals to receive special protections based on their choice of jewelry under the same statute that protects blacks who had no choice on skin color, and the paralyzed who had no choice but the wheelchair serves only to cheapen the spirt of the civil rights laws.
If someone "chooses"
to wear a Star of David or a cross, they forfeit their right to claim religious discrimination? A woman who "chooses" to dress in a way our culture considers feminine, rather than in a burkha, has no basis to complain if she is sexually harassed or assaulted?
Assholishness aside,
your argument doesn't even hold water.
People choose to present in a way that expresses their gender and race as well. People could choose to present as a different race or gender. But why should they have to? We need to work toward getting people like you to be compassionate and respectful, not toward blaming victims and insisting that their presentation meets O-FISH-L standards.
(And actually, I wouldn't expect you to have any background before you start spouting off, but there's research showing that a statistically significant number of LGB people have hormonal differences from straight people, so these would be expressed in physical characteristics. There was even a study showing that gay men can reliably pick out gay men when just shown a photograph of an eye.
And of course, many transgender people don't "pass" unless they get loads of facial surgeries and voice therapies and things that I assume your pompous ass isn't advocating that our society starts paying for for them, not that it's their obligation to look a certain way for your comfort anyway, and they of course deserve to be treated fairly no matter how they look.)
Also
why the fuck should we only be who we are in a gay bar? Do you dress differently and talk differently and have a different family composition when you're on the T than when you're with your family and friends?
And if I do decide I want to follow along with your little fantasy, where do I rent a straight family to take with me on the T, and where do I hide mine during my excursion?
civil rights law
If I recall correctly a few months ago a bus driver was attacked on Dudley street by a group of thugs who called him the N- word and made statements on you tube that they were going to kill the Fn N-word,how come they were not charged with civil rights?
anon 12:03 pm civil rights law
I thought the same thing. Selective enforcement of the civil rights law is unfortunate.
That group is almost diverse enough for a TV show
Maybe they were on the Orange Line to pick up an Asian as a recurring minor character.
Then all they're need to round out the cast is a wisecracking gay guy.
Oh wait.
On the bright side, it's nice
On the bright side, it's nice to see the diversity.
Somewhere...
there's a white supremacist misogynist who is peeing himself laughing that this lot is doing his job for him.
Adam
can you add LGBT tag? Thanks!
(Helpful to have stuff tagged since you're one of the few not-specifically-queer publications that covers queer issues fairly well.)