CRIME
Racist Homophobe Aims Hate at SI Pride Center
Admitted bigot’s letters laced with slurs, violent imagery, district attorney says
BY MATT TRACY
A man was slapped with
hate crime charges after
he allegedly sent a
racist letter to a woman
in Staten Island and numerous homophobic
letters to the Staten Island
Pride Center demanding that
“you and your sicko pals… be put
out to pasture once and for all for
the sake of mankind,” according to
a criminal complaint obtained by
Gay City News.
Brian Jones, a 48-year-old Staten
Islander, has admitted to having
sent the hate-fi lled screeds, according
to authorities.
Roughly a half dozen letters were
sent to the Pride Center, according
to that group’s executive director,
Carol Bullock, who told Gay City
News the mail started fl owing in
after New York City Pride in 2018
and continued up until the weeks
before the alleged bigot was nabbed
this month.
Bullock believes some of the letters
were motivated by the organization’s
boycott this year of the
Staten Island Yankee s after the
team partnered with the fast food
Staten Island Pride Center executive director Carol Bullock (at right at the head of the table) and other
members of the brough’s LGBTQ community meet with Richmond County District Attorney Michael E.
McMahon (at left at the head) at the Staten Island Pride Center in July.
chain Chick-fi l-A, whose owner has
donated millions of dollars to anti-
LGBTQ organizations and politicians.
(The team has since severed
that relationship .)
TWITTER/ PRIDECENTERSI
“You and your sicko pals keep
ramming your twisted, perverted
agenda down the throats of heterosexuals,
aka normal people.
The LGBTQ community doesn’t
deserve to have anything in this
country whatsoever and that includes
so-called rights,” Jones
wrote in one of his letters to the
Pride Center on May 31, according
to the criminal complaint provided
by the Richmond County District
Attorney’s Offi ce.
Jones also allegedly used that
handwritten letter to peddle baseless
accusations of pedophilia
against gay men, writing, “Gay
men like little boys and for that
they deserve to be castrated with a
pair of rusty grass shears!”
Three months later, on August
30, authorities say he sent another
letter to the Pride Center and told
the organization that it should “be
bulldozed as well as destroyed with
countless wrecking balls… fuck
your demented agenda and you
bastards are well on your way to
hell for your abnormal and deviant
behavior. If you were in a Muslim
country you would have been dead
years ago!”
The next day, according to
prosecutors, Jones sent a package
fi lled with racist letters and
news clippings to an unidentifi ed
woman on Staten Island. He allegedly
scrawled racial slurs and
unleashed a series of offensive
statements including, “N*****! Die!
Animal! Savage! Castrate! Lowlife!
Thug!”
Jones admitted to the crimes
when he was busted by authorities,
according to the Richmond County
District Attorney’s Offi ce.
“I’m not going to lie,” he admitted,
the complaint states. “It’s me.
It’s my handwriting. I don’t like
when they shove things in my face.
I don’t have to deal with that.”
In total, Jones was hit with two
counts of aggravated harassment
as a hate crime in the second degree,
one count of aggravated harassment
in the second degree,
and one count of trespassing to
cap off his furious crusade against
queer and black folks.
Bullock, who said the letters
eventually started to target her directly,
stressed to Gay City News
that the notes would not stop her
or the Pride Center from continuing
to serve the community.
“Everyone keeps asking, ‘Is this
going to affect your work?’ I say every
day that the good we do outweighs
something like this,” Bullock
said on September 19. “I’m just
so honored to work here.”
Bullock, citing an ongoing investigation,
would not shed light
on how investigators linked the
man to the letters, and Richmond
County District Attorney Michael
McMahon did not respond to requests
for further details beyond
the information in the criminal
complaint.
Bullock thanked local prosecutors
for making progress on the
case.
“I’m happy that they identifi ed
the individual and it’s certainly a
scary situation and a scary feeling
to receive that kind of communication,”
she said. “I’m just really
happy with the district attorney
and his team of detectives because
they reacted so quickly.”
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September 26 - October 9,16 2019 | GayCityNews.com
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