[B]URLINGTON — City police are investigating the burning of a pride flag in the Old North End this weekend, coinciding with the start of June’s LGBTQ Pride month.
Burlington Police Chief Brandon del Pozo confirmed Monday that police were investigating the possible arson as a hate crime.
The flag was burned outside of a residence on Bright Street, and had been replaced by Monday morning. A leather pride flag is also flown at the house. Some charred remains of the original pride flag were still visible on the house porch.
Chris Vaccaro, the owner of the burned flag, has lived in Burlington for almost 20 years. He said he and his husband Jimmie Searle were celebrating Pride Week with friends in Montreal this weekend when he received texts from his upstairs neighbor that the flag had been burned.
The neighbor sent him a picture of the flag and the charred remains on the porch. “It took us five hours to stop shaking, someone could have burned down the house,” Vaccaro said. “We are shaken.”
The couple immediately ordered another flag on Amazon Prime, and had it flying by Sunday afternoon. LGBTQ Pride is celebrated throughout the month of June, with pride parades across the world. Pride flags outside of a New York city bar were also set on fire over the weekend.
Del Pozo said the department is treating the incident as a hate crime and is looking for video evidence and trying to determine if there are any witnesses.
“If the only thing that is destroyed in an act of arson is a pride flag, which describes the people of a protected class and coincides with the beginning of pride month, it’s clear there could be a hate nexus to this,” del Pozo said. “We’re going to treat it as if there is.”
A neighbor discovered the flag Saturday morning, and police believe the arson took place sometime overnight Friday into Saturday.
The investigation is ongoing, and the department has not received any other reports of similar anti-LGBTQ crimes.
Del Pozo said the department is donating a new flag to Vaccaro as a sign of the department’s support for the LGBTQ community.
“We take these types of things really seriously,” del Pozo said. “We will be there to protect them, and we’re nothing more than a phone call away.”
Vaccaro said he loved living the Old North End and had felt safe in Burlington. But he said he had experienced homophobia, including death threats and being chased down alleys, while living in Chelsea in New York City, known as a gay enclave.
“That doesn’t stop bad things from happening, even if you are in a progressive neighborhood or a progressive city,” he said.
Vaccaro said the incident made Burlington feel a little less safe.
“Every morning we’ve been looking out the window to make sure the flag isn’t on fire, and the flag is still there, and whoever did it isn’t coming back,” he said.
But he said he and Searle had been encouraged by an outpouring of support from the city’s LGBTQ community.
“If this happened once, it can happen again, but there is so much support for love from the LGBTQ community,” he said. “I draw my strength from the LGBTQ community here in Burlington.”
This story was updated with an interview with Vaccaro at 9 p.m. Tuesday.
