On February 28, hundreds of marchers wound through Capitol Hill, holding candles, to protest an upsurge of anti-gay violence in Seattle. In December, an anonymous letter writer threatened to fatally poison the patrons of 11 gay bars. In January, police arrested a man who had chased a woman down Broadway yelling, "I'll kill you... lesbian!" And on separate nights in February, two men—Jay Lewis and Jerry Knight—were attacked on Capitol Hill; in both cases, the assailants screamed "faggot" before beating the men.

"We are trying to send a strong message to these bigots that we are not going to stand for these sorts of attacks," says Chanan Suarezdiaz, an organizer for the Queer Ally Coalition, which sponsored the march.

Knight was walking to his home in the Central District at about 1:30 a.m. on February 22 when two men jumped him from behind—one of them yelling, "Where the fuck are you coming from?"—and punched him in the face while repeatedly calling him "faggot." Then they knocked him to the ground and began kicking him. In a police report, an officer noted that Knight "had fresh injuries to his right eye, mouth, chin, nose, and hands.... I also observed that his all-white clothing was splattered with numerous drops of blood."

Reporting the attack to police and speaking to the media, Knight says, "[was] hard for me." He adds, "I am pretty pissed that they broke a tooth." Police referred the case to a bias-crimes detective, but so far, officers haven't made any arrests.

"I think over the last month there is at least a perceived notion that [gay bashings] are increasing," says David Beard, cochair of the Seattle Commission for Sexual Minorities. The Seattle Police Department (SPD) does not specifically track bias crimes against sexual minorities. However, according to the FBI, hate crimes against sexual minorities rose 6 percent in the U.S. in 2007, despite a slight drop in bias crimes overall.

"We don't know exactly what is happening but we need to be very concerned," says Equal Rights Washington spokesman Josh Friedes. "Even one bias crime is one more than should be acceptable."

However, gay community leaders are divided about how to quell the problem. Several gay leaders in Seattle have voiced support for the return of Q-Patrol, a volunteer squad in black-and-white fatigues that used to patrol Capitol Hill streets to deter gay bashings. The group, which formed in 1991, is credited with reducing the rate of hate crimes in the 1990s. It dissolved shortly after 2000, due to a lack of demand, volunteers, and money.

"People talk about Q-Patrol, but I don't think they have any idea how much work it takes to train people to keep people safe and the time commitment to go out every night and walk the streets," says Michael Wells, who serves on the board of the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce and belongs to an informal coalition that discusses threats to the gay community.

Q-Patrol also flourished because, decades ago, police departments were infamously homophobic and Capitol Hill demanded local security forces that were sensitive to gay and transgender people. But police officers' attitudes have progressed. "I am really proud of our police department and how seriously they took it," Knight says. SPD even has an LGBTQ Advisory Council, which meets once a month to talk about how the police can serve and protect the gay community.

Some are looking to law enforcement to establish a greater presence on Capitol Hill—especially on weekend nights.

"I think that increased police visibility is always helpful at deterring crime, especially if we are talking about the Pike-Pine corridor," says Mike Hogan, the senior deputy prosecutor for King County. "I know that the challenge for us and [Seattle] police is that this is budget-cut time; they have fewer officers than they previously did, and our office's budget is down 10 percent." He calls it a "severe reduction in resources that nobody likes. But it is what we have to work with."