Less than a week after local man Jared Fox was beaten and disfigured by a mob of 20 teenagers outside Cleveland’s Cocktails Lounge, two boys returned to the same bar to terrorize patrons on an outdoor patio.
But this time, police have taken one of the assailants into custody, although they’re unsure if the 13-year-old boy was also involved in last week’s attack.
Around 8pm on Friday evening, Ric Scardino and friends were enjoying drinks on the lounge’s outdoor patio on the corner of West 93rd and Detroit Ave when a group of teenagers stopped to throw rocks at patrons over the fence. “They started taunting us, yelling gay slurs and so on and so forth,” Scardino said.
Once he kicked open the gate to confront the group of boys, all but two scattered. Scardino says one of the boys, identified by a white t-shirt in the surveillance video, had a broom in his hand, threatening to beat and sodomize Scardino.
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Although no physical altercation ensued, one of the boys is now in custody and it doesn’t make patrons, the bar owners, or neighbors feel any safer; there seems to be a massive problem with keeping Cleveland’s gay neighborhood free of vermin. “I’m even scared when my wife sits out on the front porch by herself,” said neighbor Rick Pazicni.
“It’s not necessarily about the business; it’s just about us calling this out to make sure everybody in Cleveland is safe– not just gays, not just straights, not just blacks, not Hispanics, everybody,” bar manager James Foster told Fox 8. Additional pressure has been added to keep the streets safe ahead of the Gay Games, which will be coming to Cleveland next year.
According to Fox 8, police increased patrols in the area on Saturday and Sunday, but only managed to arrest people for marijuana possession and traffic violations. Way to go, Cleveland PD.
adam madam
“there seems to be a massive problem with keeping Cleveland’s gay neighborhood free of vermin.”
Two things, coming from a resident of Cleveland:
–There isn’t really a gay neighborhood in CLE. There are friendly suburbs, trendy neighborhood, and more- and less-gay friendly enclaves. But there ain’t no Chelsea, Halsted, South Beach, PTown in this town.
–If there is a gay ‘hood, this bar is not in it. Very iffy, impoverished neighborhood on one side, empty former factory site across the street, long stretches of nothing one could call a neighborhood at all.
It’s not a matter of the police not being able to protect a gayborhood. It’s a matter of there not being a gayborhood in the first place.
Dakotahgeo
This, together with the Steubenville, OH gang, plus other nasty stories, doesn’t make Ohio the brightest streetlamp on the Boulevard of States! First, they need to be educated… then they need to be taught HOW to use that education. It always takes some states years longer to progress, sadly!