HOUSTON — A Houston group that disbanded decades ago is making a comeback. With hate crime on the rise in the early 1990s, Q-Patrol was formed to help increase safety in Montrose.
The volunteers would walk the streets at night to help keep people safe and hopefully deter crime before it happened, but on Wednesday, some new organizers said it’s time to bring the effort back.
It was October 1991 when a group of volunteers in Montrose brought an entirely new definition to neighborhood watch.
"Q-Patrol was formed in response to violence that was taking place around gay bars in Houston," one of the original founders, Mark Gartner, said.
Q-Patrol had one goal: to keep people safe as they went to and from bars in Montrose.
"Be the eyes and ears so that we can make the calls to the police and report things," another original founder of Q-Patrol, Stephen Tompkins, said.
Gartner and Tompkins said the group disbanded after several years when police increased their presence.
"So, we weren’t really needed that much," Gartner said.
But three decades later, members of the LGBTQ+ community said the need is back.
"We had people losing their lives in Montrose. And now we’re going through it all again," a new founder of Q-Patrol, Salvador Meave, said.
Salvador and his husband, Marc Meave, are founders of the group ActOutHTX. They said they decided to bring back Q-Patrol after seeing a change in the political climate and laws.
"It’s kind of a shocker because it feels like we’re going back in time a little bit," Meave said.
"Because it’s coming. There is an 'us' and there is a 'them.' Let’s be real," Salvador said.
They said that while the original Q-Patrol took a reactive response to crime that already occurred, they’re hoping this time to be proactive to prevent hate from happening.
"It’s evolved with our technology, with the social media, with the people that we know, with the networking," Meave said.
Taking Q-Patrol to the next level, the new founders said they still plan to have volunteers walk the streets at night, but they also hope to attend other events and be a hub for resources and education.
"We have Jiu-Jitsu training, we have diffusion training, we have additional training for active training, we have one coming in for Narcan use," Salvador said.
It’s an effort the original founders said is long overdue.
"If we’re out there on the street and we’re visible with cameras and eyes and reporting mechanisms, that’s going to make a difference," Gartner said.
Q-Patrol said they have 25 volunteers so far but are looking for more. They also hope to eventually set up a hotline so people can call in when they need help or even an escort to their car.