Posters warn of hate crimes

Mike Hogan, a deputy King County prosecutor, walked into a pet store on Capitol Hill on Friday and asked to put up a poster in the window.

"We're going to make the bad people go away," he said.

Hogan and other volunteers began putting up the posters, which were unveiled at a Friday news conference, in the neighborhood in response to a spate of anti-gay episodes last year

"Hate Crimes Alert," the signs say in big letters. They advise gays and lesbians to not walk alone. "Avoid Being a Victim," they say. "Stay together -- leave clubs with friends."

A little earlier, at the news conference, Hogan said he prosecuted 14 bias crimes in 2007, about half aimed at gays. The number of incidents, which occurred mainly last summer in the traditionally gay neighborhood, was the most he'd seen in a short period of time during his 20 years in the Prosecutor's Office.

King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg, who also attended the meeting, said it's difficult to know if the incidents constitute a trend, but said the posters were aimed at answering the "perceived increase in hate crimes."

"What I'm hearing is guys feeling real fear walking around at night," Fred Swanson, executive director of the Gay City Health Project, said at the news conference.

The warnings harked back to a time when gay people could not walk the streets openly. "It's horrible. But it's the reality, and there are basic ways to keep yourself safe," Swanson said.

The neighborhood also has been alarmed by other violence apparently not related to sexual orientation -- the stabbing slaying of Shannon Harps on New Year's Eve, and the shooting death of a man outside the Baltic Room on Pine Street last Saturday.

Later, Hogan and Jack Hilovsky, executive director of the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce, walked along East Pike Street, stopping at a restaurant and a sex toys store to put up the signs.

The posters also said to stay alert to surroundings, and when encountering a bully, to call 911. "Avoid injury -- don't engage the bully."

Hogan said he was a victim about 20 years ago. "A friend of mine and I were walking his dog in Volunteer Park. These drunk college kids asked us what the dog's name was ... and they said it was a fag's name and starting chasing us."

As in that episode, the anti-gay attacks appeared to come late at night. "My defendants haven't been clean and sober," Hogan said at the news conference. The opening of more clubs oriented toward heterosexuals might be attracting people unfamiliar with the neighborhood.

Hilovsky wrote an essay in the Capitol Hill Times about what "gay neighborhood" means to gay people, and about moving to Capitol Hill from the Midwest and feeling welcomed and liberated.

He raised a question about how to hold on to a neighborhood's identity "while welcoming the new arrivals who may or may not share our experience and sense of place?"

As he put a poster up in the window of a furniture shop, Hilovsky said they are part of the answer -- that the neighborhood may still be changing but there are certain mores and values.