According to the proprietor of one of New York City’s newest LGBT clubs, a brick was recently thrown at the establishment’s front glass four times. The New York Police Department said that the most recent incident, which occurred just this past weekend, is being investigated as a hate crime.
A person can be seen in a video taken on Saturday night and confirmed by NBC News throwing a brick at the front window of VERS, a gay bar on Ninth Avenue that just opened in July. The person is still unidentified by authorities. No one was hurt, according to a department representative who stated in an email that the glass wasn’t entirely broken by the brick.
According to the NYPD and David DeParolesa, the proprietor of the pub, it wasn’t the first time the location has been attacked. DeParolesa claimed that the incident on Saturday was merely the most recent in a string of similar ones that have targeted the pub over the previous month.
DeParolesa said that the bar failed to disclose the first attack since it took place after hours on October 20. Staff didn’t learn till the following day. He claimed that they believed the incident to be a “random hit.”
But on the afternoon of November 13, he claimed he began to believe the club was being targeted when another brick was hurled at the front glass. A similar event happened two days later and again this weekend, according to the NYPD. None of the occurrences resulted in any injuries.
Regarding the second and third incidences, he stated, “Some of our staff believed it was gunshots and ducked,” adding that the bar’s security guard tried to track down the offender on both occasions but was unsuccessful in catching them or identifying them.
In a tweet on Sunday, LGBT New York City council member Erik Bottcher referred to the occurrences as “hate crimes” and requested anybody with information that could help identify the offender to contact the NYPD Hate Crime Task Force. DeParolesa said Saturday’s event had been forwarded to the task force.
Mark Levine, the borough president of Manhattan, also tweeted on Sunday, “The epidemic of anti-LGBTQ+ violence is national.” “Repeated attacks have occurred recently on the west side of Manhattan on a well-known homosexual bar. We cannot tolerate this.
The incidents occurred at the same time that the NYPD announced this month that it is looking into a string of thefts and assaults that might be related to the deaths of two homosexual men earlier this year after they left Hell’s Kitchen gay bars.
A gay nightclub in Colorado Springs was shot at by a shooter just hours after the attack at VERS on Saturday, leaving five people dead and 19 more injured. On Monday, prosecutors in Colorado filed five first-degree murder charges and five bias-related offences against the suspect. The mayor of Colorado Springs stated on the “TODAY” show that he believed the shooting had “all the trappings of a hate crime,” despite the fact that the shooter’s motivation is still unknown.
Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York, announced on Monday that she has instructed the state police to increase the security of vulnerable communities, such as LGBTQ communities, throughout the state.
DeParolesa emphasized that his club is a safe place and that no one was wounded during any of the instances involving his institution, but he also stated that he believes there is an “emboldened anti-gay, anti-trans resurgence” taking place in the nation right now.
He said, “The pendulum swings. “This is how that manifests itself.”
