A lesbian said she was called a “dyke” and other slurs and had a double-barrel shotgun pointed at her while walking along the 2000 block of Venice Street in Ocean Beach on Aug. 22, according to a San Diego Police Department report. This crime coincides with three other incidents involving gay males, all of which occurred in the last week in the Hillcrest and North Park area.

Lt. Margie Schaufelberger said the lesbian victim in Ocean Beach was walking in the evening hours and men in a truck drove by her slowly, shouted anti-gay slurs and then drove away. Then, as the victim continued to walk, the men in the truck drove back and continued to yell slurs at her before taking out a double-barrel shot gun and pointing it at her, according to a report the victim filed with the SDPD.

Schaufelberger said the victim was unable to describe the people in the truck but believes the truck possibly was a dark-colored Ford Ranger pickup.

“The challenge with [this incident] is that she has such limited suspect information,” Schaufelberger said. “That is going to be very difficult unless obviously either she is able to remember more information about the vehicle or remember some way to describe the suspects.”

If the man who pointed the gun at the victim is caught, he would be charged with the crime of exhibiting a weapon in a threatening manner, Schaufelberger said. The SDPD is unable to release the name of the victim since the crime may be classified as a hate crime.

In another incident that occurred in the early morning hours of Aug. 26, Hillcrest resident Michael Earick said he was walking home from Hamburger Mary’s between 12:30 and 1:00 a.m. at the intersection of Seventh and University avenues when he saw a man run across the street with his fist in the air.

“I assumed he was just trying to get across the street,” Earick said. “Then he tried to hit me as hard as he could on the side of my face to bring me down, and then two others jumped me.”

Earick said there were a total of three men wearing matching black jackets with red on the bottom. He said one man hit him on the side of the head while the other two men brought him to the ground. Earick broke free from the suspects and ran back to Hamburger Mary’s, where he called the police, he said.

Earick described all three men as thin African-Americans between 6 feet 4 inches and 6 feet 6 inches tall.

Earick said though he heard one of the men use the word “fag” during the assault, he doesn’t think it was a hate crime.

“They were looking for money and that was it,” he said. “… It just so happened that I was big and I was sober. They just picked the wrong person.”

Schaufelberger confirmed Earick’s call to the police and said he declined to have a crime report filed. She said the SDPD still plans to follow up with him since another crime may have been connected to his, which occurred two days later on Aug. 27 on Utah Street in North Park.

Schaufelberger said the gay male victim, whose name has not been released, walked down Utah Street after visiting a friend and entered a 7-Eleven store. She said a vehicle pulled ahead of him in the block and four African-American males got out, beat him up and robbed him of his wallet. The victim declined medical attention at the scene, according to the police report.

The SDPD are trying to determine if this crime is related to the one Earick was involved in and perhaps others that have occurred throughout the city.

“There is a similar suspect description with regard to those, and we are looking at those to see whether or not they in fact involve the same perpetrators,” Schaufelberger said. “… Unfortunately, in cases like this, absent physical evidence, like finger prints and that kind of stuff, like you get in a property crime – it’s a little tougher. What is to our advantage sometimes is if the suspects steal cellular phones, because they use them.”

In another incident reported to the police on Aug. 24, Hillcrest resident Larry Kuse said he was walking down Fifth Avenue after leaving The Caliph and was confronted by a man who swung at him with a bat and sprayed him in the eyes with pepper spray.

Kuse said no words were exchanged but he ran down the street as fast as he could. He said the man who confronted him wore a hooded sweatshirt and a handkerchief over his nose and mouth.

“The guy was fast. He was right after me,” Kuse said. “I heard this swooshing behind my head from the bat.”

After initially running into a storefront that was being used as an art studio, Kuse said he ran to The Loft, where he called the police.

The two people in the art studio said they saw a couple of vehicles leaving at high speed but did not see anyone chasing Kuse, Schaufelberger said.

These crimes follow another assault the Gay & Lesbian Times previously reported on. On the evening of July 12, a gay man was walking home from the Albertsons located on Washington Street in Mission Hills when he was assaulted along the south side of the intersection at Washington and Albatross by four African-American men and robbed of his wallet. The victim, who asked not to be identified in order to protect his privacy, said he believes the incident may have been hate-motivated due to the sheer violence of the attack.

City commissioner Nicole Murray-Ramirez, who sits on the police chief’s advisory board, said he is concerned about the rise in crime in the past few months in the Hillcrest and North Park area.

“Our community seems to be under attack by both hate crimes and, obviously, a lot more robberies. I think gangs have discovered us,” he said. “The police department has brought in a gang-suppression team to also look into this.”

Murray-Ramirez said he has a meeting scheduled with Police Chief William Lansdowne at which he plans to discuss the possibility of establishing the Stonewall Citizens Patrol earlier than next year’s Pride festival. He said the group, created by American Veterans for Equal Rights in partnership with the SDPD, will patrol and monitor the areas of Balboa Park, Hillcrest and North Park during next year’s Pride weekend.