Submitted by Karsten Vagner, Greenwich
On Friday, September 12 at 6:45pm, my family did what we typically do after dinner these days: we walked our new puppy, Rio, to the park around the corner from our home. It’s become our favorite way to wind down the day together. Rio gets some exercise, our 8 year old daughter gets to burn off some energy on the playground, and my husband and I chat with other dog owners in our neighborhood.
But this Friday was different. We walked into the park, climbed the little grassy hill past the playground, and sitting underneath a tree about ten feet from us was a man, glaring.
“Look at these f***ing f*****s! F***ing h***s, get the f*** out of here, you don’t f***ing belong here!”
The man was unrelenting, screaming a litany of abuse and hate speech at my husband and me, all while our daughter grew increasingly frightened. What do you do in a moment like that? There’s the instinct to scream back and defend, but escalating seemed dangerous. There’s the instinct to run, but why should we be chased out of our own neighborhood park? And there’s the instinct to ignore, to just pretend this isn’t happening.
I’m familiar with that instinct. I survived years of bullying as a kid by not acknowledging it – I thought if I could pretend not to hear it, then maybe it would go away. Nevermind the adrenaline racing through my body. And the shame.
We walked to the other side of the park, out of the man’s sight. My husband and I looked at each other, that silent conversation with the eyes parents sometimes have in front of their kids. My husband knelt down and began to try to explain to our daughter what was happening, and I took out my phone to get help.
I’m writing this letter for a few reasons. First, I want to publicly thank Fred Camillo and the Greenwich Police Department for responding to me quickly and jumping into action to help my family. I also want to do what I never did as a kid – I want to acknowledge that this happened.
Attacks like this (and many far, far worse) happen to LGBTQ+ people all too frequently. According to the FBI’s latest report, 17.2% of all reported hate crimes in 2024 were prompted by sexual-orientation bias. Of those, over 50% of the crimes were motivated by anti-gay male bias. And those are just the crimes that were reported.
If you’re someone who wonders why we make a point of raising the Pride flag every June at Town Hall to proclaim that Greenwich is a town that welcomes everyone, this is why. In an instant, we can be robbed of our safety, feel physically threatened, and be told we’re not welcome in our own community. Just for the crime of walking in a park.
I believe the officer who came to the scene and removed the individual from the premises said it best: “This is Greenwich. You shouldn’t have to deal with this. No one should.”