Somerville, Massachusetts Police have some explaining to do. A lesbian named Lisa Daloia says that she and her friends were taunted and attacked at a Dunkin Donuts earlier this year. When police arrived, she says, they failed to give the Daloia and company proper medical treatment, instead fawning over one of the suspects, also a female. The police did not call the incident a hate crime, despite the fact that the assailants spouted anti-gay epithets.
Weeks after the incident, anti-violence activist Don Gorton sent the police chief a letter demanding action. Five days later, the mayor spoke out and, not surprisingly, so did the cops:
…Mayor Joseph Curtatone and state Representative Carl Sciortino met with Daloia and Gorton. “The mayor expressed forcefully that hate crimes were not acceptable in Somerville,” Gorton said. Curtatone declined to comment on matters being probed.
In a statement, Sciortino condemned gay-bashing and said he expects “both the incident and how it was handled by the police to be thoroughly investigated.”
According to [Police flack Paul] Upton, “as soon as the chief of police became aware of this allegation, he ordered simultaneous investigations” to determine whether the incident was a hate crime and whether the police acted appropriately.
Nothing gets a cop moving like an irate mayor.
