Boston Area Arrests Raise Concerns Among Some Gay Advocates 

The arrests of 31 men in a Medford, Mass., park over the summer has raised alarm among some advocates as to whether state police are targeting gays -- concerns that led to a recent meeting with high-level officials in Gov. Deval Patrick's office, The Boston Globe reports.

"There is some concern whether or not the State Police are up to old tactics,'' said Amanda Escamilla, a victim advocate with Fenway Health's violence recovery program, who attended the meeting last week. "There is reasonable belief that it could be happening again, and, if it is, we want to make sure that it stops.''

In a Friday article, the Globe reported on one such arrestee, a gay computer technician detained in August and charged with trespassing after he approached an undercover state trooper in the city's Torbert MacDonald Park north of Boston.

Karen Wells, undersecretary of law enforcement for the Executive Office of Public Safety, denied that state police were involved in any entrapment activity: "I'm very comfortable from the top down that [police] are treating these types of cases appropriately,'' she said. "I'm also confident that they're not sending troopers out as decoys.''

Read the article here.