Boston PD seeks cooperation of club owners in reducing hate crime

by Ethan Jacobs
Bay Windows

Detectives from the Boston Police Department’s Community Disorders Unit (CDU) told a gathering of LGBT bar and club owners June 25 that there has been a steady rise in LGBT-related hate crime investigations in the city in the past four years, particularly in police districts D4, which covers the South End, Back Bay, Lower Roxbury and Fenway; and C11, which covers Dorchester.

Curry told Bay Windows she was unsure how many of those incidents took place at LGBT bars and clubs, but she said the CDU decided to reach out to bar and club owners after receiving a handful of reports of robberies and other incidents in and around LGBT bars. This year at least two violent incidents in and around LGBT bars in Boston have generated headlines. In January, 20-year-old Roxbury hair stylist Daniel Yakovleff was found stabbed to death in a Dorchester apartment; he was last seen in the South End’s Boston Eagle bar. His murder remains unsolved. Last month Daniel D’Orsi, a 22-year-old Northeastern student, was brutally assaulted and robbed while walking past Fritz bar in the South End in the early morning hours, and he alleged that his assailant shouted anti-gay slurs at him during the assault.

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