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Hill’s Gender Justice League pushing for more information on Sunday night beating

Capitol Hill’s Gender Justice League is looking to learn more about a beating that took place in Pike/Pine Sunday night.

According to East Precinct and Seattle Fire radio dispatches, officers responded to a disturbance reported Sunday night on 10th Ave near Pike around 9:20 PM in which the victim suffered a bloody nose that required medical treatment.

But the League’s Danni Askini has posted details to Facebook from witnesses to the altercation that describe a much more violent incident involving “a very serious hate crime against a trans woman in Capitol Hill.”

The Stranger’s Ansel Herz is reporting an account of an incident near Cal Anderson in which a crowd formed and watched the victim suffer a vicious beating:

Vincent Renart, a waiter who lives and works on the Hill, said he was walking home from Central Co-op at about 9 p.m. when he came upon a crowd of roughly 20 people near the southwest corner of Cal Anderson Park. The crowd had formed around two people who at first seemed to be “play fighting,” he said. “After he hit her a couple of times in the face, I was, like, no, this is real,” Renart told me today.

SPD has not posted an official report on the incident but did provide a statement on the investigation:

Two officers on-viewed a disturbance around 9:20 PM Sunday while working a foot patrol on Capitol Hill. The two individuals involved in the disturbance told police they had been “sparring” and “play-fighting,” which escalated into an altercation. Both had sustained minor injuries, but did not require transport for medical treatment. Officers documented the incident and provided a warning about fighting in public before releasing the pair from the scene.


According to radio dispatches, police were first flagged down near 10th and Pike around 9:20 PM to a report of a disturbance in the area. Shortly after, a witness also called 911 to report the incident. SPD officers reported that the situation was under control and that they were in contact with people at the scene including one person near the Cal Anderson bathrooms. Police then called in Seattle Fire to respond to a 45-year-old victim who was bleeding from the nose. We’ve asked Seattle Fire for more details on the response.

Askini continues to look for more information on the incident:

Gender Justice League is looking to identify and offer assistance to the victim of this attack. This report comes at a time of heightened awareness in Capitol Hill’s LGBT Community of a large increase in hate violence targeted at LGBT people. Gender Justice League is actively participating in the Mayor’s LGBT Hate Crimes Task Force and hosted a Hate Crimes Town Hall in March with Councilmember Kshama Sawant’s office.

We believe a united and strong response is needed to send a clear message that bias motivated violence, harassment, and discrimination has no place on Capitol Hill. If you know the victim of this attack, please reach out to Danni Askini, Executive Director of Gender Justice League [email protected].

 

 

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Dre
Dre
8 years ago

I hate to say it, but sometimes when it comes down to fight or flight, it’s better off to just walk away (or run if needed).

RWK
RWK
8 years ago

Serious crime in Pike-Pine is out of control! It’s going to be a long, violent summer unless something is done. I don’t have the answers, but obviously SPD patrols need to be stepped up.

JT
JT
8 years ago

20 people were gathered around the fight and nobody did anything? Glad it was just a bloody nose and not something more serious. It’s unclear to me…did the victim know the attacker? Did the victim agree that this was “play fighting”? Seems like there was something more if there were so many onlookers and the police got involved.

Follow up question: Hate crimes in Seattle include gender identity, is that correct? If women (who are an oppressed and disenfranchised population in this country) are attacked by a non-woman identified individual, is it a hate crime? I’m glad the Gender Justice League is looking into this. We also need community organizations that support all women, cis or trans, who are beaten, raped, and attacked every day in this country and in our city. Some occasional news coverage might be helpful too, CHS…

larrymcdibble
larrymcdibble
8 years ago
Reply to  JT

JT- For a hate crime to occur one has to be attacked specifically for that reason. For example. …if I’m walking down the street with my boyfriend holding hands and someone walks up to me and says, “I hate fags” and punches me in the face it would be a ‘hate crime.’ If I’m in a bar and end up in a bar fight for any reason other than someone’s religion, race, politics, or sexual orientation and during the course of that fight calls me a fag or gook it is not a hate crime because the motivation behind the incident was something else. We should focus on real cases of malicious harrasment. Obsessively ringing the bell every time a fight occurs (every night) will deafen the narrative.

Capitol Hill Chick
Capitol Hill Chick
8 years ago
Reply to  JT

Yeah, I don’t understand why all gender-based violence, including rape, online rape threats, etc. aren’t covered by hate-crime legislation. We should definitely protect trans individuals and others, but it is insane that women, who are the biggest worldwide group of victims of hate crimes, seem to be left out of these discussions and left to fend for themselves. Is violence against women just so common and accepted that folks don’t seem to get as outraged about it as they do about crimes based on sexual orientation/gender identification?

Maggie
Maggie
8 years ago

I could not agree with you more, Capitol Hill Chick. It kills me that women are targeted based on their gender all the freaking time, yet we don’t get protection under hate crime laws. It makes absolutely no sense to me.

larrymcdibble
larrymcdibble
8 years ago
Reply to  Maggie

Women are attacked under the states Malicious Harassment law. Abvoctim would have to be specifically attacked because of their gender. Not just because the poor woman was an easy victim.

Maggie
Maggie
8 years ago
Reply to  larrymcdibble

I think it would be easy to argue that women are both raped and sexually assaulted by men because they are women. Straight men would not generally target other men if they could.

JT
JT
8 years ago

Well said, CH Chick and Maggie. I would like to think that our society is not so used to violence against women that it is just not as news-worthy as violence against other marginalized populations. I say this as a queer-identified woman. It’s weird to think that if someone attacked me while I held hands with my girlfriend that this would get more attention than if I was attacked while walking down the street at night. I’d argue that both are because I am a woman, as women walking alone at night (or day, or any location or time, really) are at a much greater risk than men or people who are perceived as male.

RWK
RWK
8 years ago
Reply to  JT

I’m not sure what you mean by saying that women are “disenfranchised.” That word is usually used regarding voting rights, and last I heard women have the same right to vote as men.

Dre
Dre
8 years ago
Reply to  RWK

The word is in reference to power or privilege. Because a man can be safer walking home alone at night, this is a privilege. Women feel disenfranchised when annoying men holler at them or make them feel unsafe.

RWK
RWK
8 years ago
Reply to  Dre

OK, I stand corrected….seems the word has several definitions.