by Daniel Borunda \ El Paso Times
A man allegedly beaten up by men who told him they didn't want gays in their Lower Valley neighborhood is one of three hate crimes reported to police this year.
Though the number of hate crimes in El Paso is less than in similar-sized cities, El Paso mirrors a national analysis that found gays are more likely to be the victims of violent hate crimes than other minorities.
Gays were victims in two of three hate crimes reported this year and in three of four cases reported in 2009, according to information from El Paso police. The remaining cases targeted a black Baptist church and a synagogue.
Police point out the number of hate crimes is small but local gay rights activists feel cases are going unreported. A hate crime is defined as a crime motivated by a bias against race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation.
"We know there is more than three or four a year. Those who are harassed or victims of hate crimes are afraid (to report) because of the stigma from mainstream society," said Jonathan Kennedy, chairman of the gay rights group Rio Grande Adelante.
"I am an African-American gay man and I hear more from within the gay society from victims because of their homosexuality than from the African-American community," Kennedy said.
A national analysis by the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report stated gays are more than twice as likely to be attacked in hate crimes than blacks or Jews, more than four times as likely as Muslims and 14 times as likely as Hispanics.
The recently-published analysis looked at 14 years of federal hate crime data. The Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center tracks hate groups.
The cases in El Paso did not appear to be connected to each other.
The most recent case was Aug. 2 when a woman and her gay best friend were driving on Prado Lane in the Lower Valley when they were waved down by acquaintances to talk.
According to complaint affidavits filed by police, an argument erupted regarding hickeys a man had left on the neck of one of the assailant's younger brothers. The man was beaten while two other men grabbed the woman to keep her from helping her friend.
During the beating, the attackers said they did not want gay people in their neighborhood.
One of the attackers allegedly took out a knife that the man kicked away before managing to run away.
Police spokesman Detective Mike Baranyay said officers arrested Tomas Madrid, 36, Moises Lopez, 31, and Edgar Lopez, 25, in connection with the beating on suspicion of engaging in organized criminal activity-assault.
The other cases this year were:
Shortly after 2 a.m. May 18, a 25-year-old man was arrested after allegedly breaking stained glass windows and attempting to bust down the door of the Friendship Missionary Baptist Church at 7615 Matamoros in the Lower Valley.
Alex Guzman, using racial slurs, told police he hated blacks, according to a complaint affidavit. "Take me to jail I don't care," he told officers. "I broke the windows. I know it's a hate crime. I don't give a (expletive)."
On April 7, a man punched another man in the 1900 block of Olive Avenue on the South Side because he thought the victim was gay, police said. Baranyay said detectives talked to the victim but he did not want to prosecute. The case is now inactive.
A police spokesman said there were four hate crimes reported in 2009, though the FBI data only shows three. The reason for the discrepancy was not immediately clear.
The four cases reported by the Police Department were:
A man accused of slapping a woman who, according to police documents, he said didn't count because she was gay after she defended a female friend in the Cincinnati Avenue Entertainment District. Aaron Levar Haynes, 32, pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct after an assault charge was reduced because the victim was unavailable for trial, a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office said.
A case in which a gay man received harassing phone calls, threatening to burn him alive and kill him. The calls stopped and the man did not want to prosecute, police said.
Graffiti spray-painted at a house in Sunset Heights using a slur and stating that two gay men lived in the residence. There were no arrests.
And an unsolved vandalism case where swastikas and tagger-style graffiti were spray-painted outside the Chabad Lubavitch synagogue. There are less than a handful of hate crimes reported each year in El Paso, keeping in line with the city's overall low violent crime rate. Police reported two hate crimes in 2008 and four each in 2007 and 2006.
Daniel Borunda may be reached at dborunda@elpasotimes.com; 546-6102.
Hate crimes
Hate crime numbers in 2009 for select regional cities and incidents per bias motivation:
City - Race - Religion - Sexual Orientation - Ethnicity
El Paso - 0 - 1 - 2 - 0
Austin - 3 - 1 - 4 - 3
San Antonio - 3 - 1 - 3 - 2
Midland - 2 - 0 - 0 - 0
Fort Worth - 3 - 2 - 0 - 1
Odessa - 0 - 0 - 0 - 1
Albuquerque - 3 - 0 - 5 - 1
Tucson - 3 - 6 - 2 - 0
Source: FBI's Hate Crime Statistics, 2009.
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