Rochester has had a reputation as a gay-friendly city. But a June 1 incident shows that prejudice against the gay community is still strong - and dangerous.

At a press conference on June 12, city officials and Gay Alliance leaders gave the following account:

At around 2:30 a.m. on June 1, eight people in two groups were accosted and beaten in front of 312 South Goodman Street, near the intersection with Harvard Street. Their attackers - two men and two women between the ages of about 25 and 30 - used gay slurs throughout the incident. One of them hit the victims with a metal pipe.

When police arrived, they charged three of the victims for disorderly conduct, for allegedly refusing to leave the scene, but they did not charge any of the alleged attackers. The victims say they were not refusing officers' instructions but were asking that the officers do something about the attack.

Victims say that one or more officers also used gay slurs as police told the victims to disperse. (In a report on WROC TV, one of the victims said the officer called her a "drunken dyke.") One of the victims says he was slammed to the ground while being taken into custody. The three victims facing charges were detained by police and released a couple of hours later, Councilmember Bill Pritchard said in an interview last week.

Police did not obtain identification of the alleged attackers, and the police department and city officials appealed to the public for help in finding the suspects. Over the weekend, police identified four suspects and began questioning them.

At the June 12 press conference, Mayor Bob Duffy pledged a thorough investigation. Witnesses and the victims have been interviewed, Duffy said, and Police Chief David Moore said an internal department investigation has begun. The FBI is also investigating.

Late last week,the Gay Alliance's executive director, Kris Hinesley, was finding one bit of positive news in the attack: The victims called the police when they were attacked, and they have been willing to speak about the attack and the alleged police misconduct.

That's a powerful sign for the LGBT community, whose members often don't report possible bias crimes to police, says Hinesley. Historically, there has been fear and distrust of the police.

Some victims feel fear or shame, says the Gay Alliance's anti-violence project coordinator, Alexandra Cobus, and don't report crimes against them.

"It's very similar to victims and survivors of rape or sexual assault," she says.

The victim may also be someone who hasn't come out or is unable to be out because of work. Or they may be straight and be afraid that their sexuality will be questioned.

Two victims of the June 1 attack serve in the Marines. If they are gay and publicly outed, they could risk being expelled from the military.

Over the years, the Rochester Police Department and the Gay Alliance have worked together to improve relations between police and the LGBT community. The department appointed officer Jim Hall as liaison to the LGBT community. Hall gives out his cell phone number, and victims are encouraged to call him. People have been willing to talk to him, says Hinesley, because they trust him and know he will be friendly,

"We can't allow a few people to determine our perception of the whole force," says Hinesley.

The Gay Alliance also works with city and county law enforcement officers to help them understand hate crimes and LGBT issues.

Those efforts can't prevent hate crimes, however. And the June 1 attack is not an isolated incident. "This is something that unfortunately happens more often than anybody thinks," said Councilmember Bill Pritchard.

About a year ago, two women were accosted leaving a Park Avenue bar in another event motivated by homophobia, says Hinesley.

Last year, the Gay Alliance of the Genesee Valley received 38 reports of what it terms "hate activity." That category can include hate crimes, but it also includes incidents that may not rise to that level. For example, vandals cut in half a banner at First Unitarian Church on South Winton Road that supported equal marriage rights. That incident is included in the figure.

The vandalism left the congregation with "a deep sense of sadness when we realize how far we still have to go on this issue," says the Rev. Scott Tayler, one of the parish's co-ministers.

On June 10 the church received a bomb threat. That was a few days after the Democrat and Chronicle published an article about the church's three ministers, who have decided not to sign marriage certificates for heterosexual couples until legislation allows them to sign them for same-sex couples. It's something they have done since the winter

The threat hasn't been linked to the church's stance on gay marriage, but Tayler says he can't help but notice that it echoes the church's experience with its banner.

"That's a pretty significant amount of aggression," he says.

Nationwide, there were 7,160 reported hate crimes in 2005, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report. (The 2006 hate crime statistics are not yet available.) Of those, 14 percent (1,171) were related to a sexual-orientation bias.

The most frequent forms of all bias crimes - whether based on race, sexual orientation, or religion - are harassment, intimidation, and assault, according to FBI data. But property crimes are also common.

The FBI statistics, however, have been criticized for not including figures from victim-service organizations.

About 40 percent of gay men and women say they have been victims of hate violence at some point in their adult life, according to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, which works to address violence against the LGBT community.

Anti-gay incidents tend to happen more around Pride events and when gay issues are in the forefront. In New York, Governor Eliot Spitzer recently offered legislation that would legalize gay marriage. At the national level, Congress has been considering new hate-crime legislation that would expand the federal law to include sexual orientation, the only bias not included in current laws. That law would also allow the use of federal resources to prosecute hate crimes.

In the South Goodman Street case, the crimes were based on a perception that the victims were homosexual, Hinesley says. The reality was that some members of the group were, but others were not.

Bias crimes are meant to send a clear message, says Cobus: that a community and its allies aren't welcome. And that has the effect of terrorizing a community.