Community Alerts

Following an attack on two gay men in the Madison Square Garden area earlier this week, AVP has learned of two more incidents of violence in Manhattan. On Friday, May 9th, around 5 a.m. two gay men were attacked near the 33rd Street PATH Station in Manhattan. Both survivors suffered facial injuries in the attack and were treated at Bellevue Hospital. Two men have been arrested in connection with this attack, and have been identified as Asllan Berisha, 21, and Brian Ramirez, 21, both of New York City.

AVP is working with the two survivors of a violent anti-gay assault that took place this past Sunday, May 5th, around 5 p.m. on 8th Avenue, between 34th and 35th Street. Nick Porto and Kevin Atkins were violently assaulted by four men shouting anti-gay slurs near Madison Square Garden. The couple had been walking with their arms linked when members of the group started shouting at them, and then jumped and beat them. Both men were taken to Bellevue Hospital to have their injuries treated, and have since been released.

Yesterday AVP asked that Deanna Rodriguez, the chief of the Gang Bureau of the Brooklyn District Attorney Office, publicly apologized for using anti-gay slurs in communications with her staff.

In March, Deanna Rodriguez, the chief of the Gang Bureau of the Brooklyn District Attorney Office since 1996, was suspended without pay for using anti-gay slurs and threats of violence in communications with her staff. According to an article in Monday's New York Post, Rodriguez was suspended for three months without pay beginning in March, and information about her future employment with the agency has not been shared. AVP knows that homophobic and transphobic violence from public figures not only endangers those targeted but impacts the safety of LGBTQ communities as a whole.

AVP has learned of an incident of same-gender sexual violence that occurred on the border of the Bed-Stuy and Bushwick neighborhoods in Brooklyn on April 19 around 5 am. According to the New York Post Police Blotter, a man reported to the NYPD that he was sexually assaulted and robbed at gunpoint by two men, one of whom was an acquaintance of the survivor. The survivor was admitted to Woodhull Hospital where he was treated for injuries related to this incident and later released.