Gay Community Rails at 1st Fatal Street Attack : Crime: Meeting with police at coffeehouse draws 200 seeking more protection from seemingly random assaults in Hillcrest and North Park.

A vocal crowd of about 200, mostly gays, lesbians and bisexuals, crowded Soho Tea & Coffee House in Hillcrest on Sunday to vent their anger over the more than 50 assaults in the area since July, including a weekend attack that resulted in the death of a 17-year-old.

“We’re a community that needs to stand up and be counted,” Karen Marshall, administrative director of the Lesbian and Gay Men’s Community Center, told the standing-room-only crowd.

“The only way that we are going to stop this is to become more aware. This is our neighborhood, and we are losing it very quickly,” she said.

Officer Matt Weathersby, the San Diego Police Department’s liaison to the city’s lesbian, gay and bisexual citizens, told the crowd that the attacks are not an issue confined to the homosexual community because, in most of the cases, the attackers have made no comments about sexual orientation.

“This is not a gay, lesbian or bisexual issue, this is an issue for North Park and Hillcrest,” Weathersby said.

He did concede, however, that “probably more than half of the victims that have been attacked are gay or lesbian.”

The most recent attack, late Friday, was the first fatality in 52 attacks in the area since July and the first to be labeled a hate crime by San Diego police because of witnesses’ accounts that the assailants repeatedly called the men a derogatory term for homosexuals, police said.

Police said the attack does not appear to be related to the 51 assaults committed since July by young black men on white victims in the North Park and Hillcrest areas.

John Robert Wear, Bryan Baird and a companion were walking in the 1000 block of Essex Street at 11:13 p.m. when two men approached them, police said.

“One of Wear’s companions said, ‘Hey, how are you doing?’ to the approaching men, and, without warning, one of them struck Baird in the face and body. They also attacked Wear with fists, feet and a knife,” Police Lt. Tom Orden said.

Wear, 17, of Del Cerro, suffered stab wounds to his chest. The Twain High School student was taken to Mercy Hospital, where he died at 11:53 p.m. Saturday, police said.

Baird, 18, of San Carlos, suffered a 4-inch cut on his face, was treated at Kaiser Hospital and released. The third person escaped the attack uninjured.

Both of the attackers were white, about 18 years old, wore flannel shirts, jeans and combat-style boots and had shaved heads, Orden said.

Many of the 200 people who crowded Soho Tea & Coffee House on Sunday heckled Weathersby when he said that people in the area need to do more to make themselves less vulnerable to attack.

“I don’t want to blame the victims, but that is part of the problem. People also do not report things” to police, he said. Weathersby said the Police Department bases its decisions on assigning its officers, in part, on the number of incidents reported in a given area, so a rise in the number of reported crimes could lead to more officers patrolling the area.

But many in the crowd shouted back that, often, when they do report incidents, no one responds unless someone has been injured.

“It’s about time the Police Department took responsibility to protect and serve the people in this community and stop blaming us,” Frank Buttino said, to thunderous applause.

“We’ve called you enough times. Fifty-one attacks, that’s enough. Get the services out here!” yelled another member of the crowd.

Wendy See, manager of the coffeehouse, came to Weathersby’s rescue.

“The real issue is that we are walking to our cars at night alone and walking home so drunk that we can’t think,” See said. “We have to get our act together. We can’t blame the police. They can’t be everyplace at once.”

San Diego Councilman John Hartley, whose district includes the Hillcrest area, told the crowd that he had met with City Manager Jack McGrory to consider stepped-up police patrols in the area.

Sunday’s noon meeting was by far the largest of several held in the past few months in response to the attacks in the Hillcrest and North Park area, Marshall said. Previous meetings have included personal-training classes and discussions with bar owners over ways they can improve safety and security.

Further meetings are scheduled this week, Marshall said, including one tonight with Hartley to discuss specific actions police can take, Marshall said.