CAPITOL HILL RESIDENTS can breathe a little easier while walking in the neighborhood. The Queer Safety Patrol, an organization modeled on New York's Guardian Angels, is back in business. This summer has been a rejuvenating timeas recently as April, the organization's board came close to disbanding the group altogether, but they decided to stick it out. After a change and restructuring of management, increased focus on volunteer recruiting, and some hard-core fund raising, the Q Patrol, as it is commonly known, is back on the streets.
Dressed in matching black berets and T-shirts bearing the organization's logo, one or two patrols of about five people each roam the streets on weekend nights, looking for trouble. Or rather, looking for people who are in trouble, so they can lend a hand. The volunteers walk people to their cars, escort them down dark streets, and call cabs for the inebriated. They are trained to intervene in violent situations, but for the most part patrols rely on their presence to provide a "visual deterrent" to crime. They also serve as "an extra set of eyes and ears for the police," according to Capitol Hill's Community Police Team officer Joe Osborne, while giving "people with a distrust of the police somewhere to go."
There has never been a shortage of those people on Capitol Hill. Twelve years ago, when gay bashings on Capitol Hill occurred almost daily, "people were angry," says Q Patrol director Jacob D'Annunzio, "and the police department response was not what we wanted." So the Q Patrol was founded as an alternative to the police and to give Capitol Hill residents a shot at self-governance. The program was a success; in its heyday, patrols were on duty five nights a week.
BUT THE NEIGHBORHOOD is evolving, and the Q Patrol must evolve with it. According to Osborne, who has worked on the Hill for more than 16 years, gay bashings are less frequent. "The demographics of the area have changed," he explains. "There are more street youth now, and [yet] there don't seem to be the bashings that inspired" the Q Patrol. But does that make the patrols obsolete? That's a question on the minds of many in recent months, including D'Annunzio's.
"Has the neighborhood changed so much that we're not needed anymore? I don't know," he said in early July. Since then, he's changed his tune. Now, he says, an influx of street kids and the homelessgroups that often "have the least trust for the police department"makes the patrol as necessary as ever. "By us being on the street and not giving tickets or anything, we are able to sit in the middle and help if there is violence or get someone to a shelter or get them some food," D'Annunzio says.
This might seem like a shift in direction for an organization that calls itself the Queer Safety Patrol, but D'Annunzio insists that the name and the focus are still appropriate: Just because the patrol isn't "intervening in gay bashings every day, does that mean that the focus needs to change from the queer community? I don't think so," he says. "What the Q Patrol has offered young queer people from day one is the opportunity to get involved, be proud of themselves, and help their community." According to D'Annunzio, none of that has changed.
Whatever the group's focus, officer Osborne is glad to have them back. "In my personal opinion, if they were to go away, in the long term we would see more incidents of assault," he says, though he admits that the Q Patrol's effect on the area isn't measurable. But if they can prevent just one assault, he points out, "they make the neighborhood a better place to be."
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