Robberies or hate crimes in Silver Lake?

My neighbor just called me to tell me what her neighbor told her - a link from another neighbor, from LA Metblogs:

This past Friday January 30, a friend of mine was brutally assaulted walking from Blair’s near Hyperion to Edendale Bar and Grill on Rowena. It was maybe between 11:30 PM or 12:30 AM near the West Silver Lake Street entrance on Rowena. He was pulled into the back of a dark driveway, had a gun pressed against his temple and then savagely thrown to the ground and beaten, crushing his left cheek; he blacked out and doesn’t remember what happened next. He couldn’t see both suspects but got a look at one who he describes as a tall, young Hispanic male.

I guess this is how you find out about crimes in LA now - by word of mouth, as the LAPD just suggested to me, or through a phone tree. That's the modern way, is it? This may be because the LAPD DOES NOT HAVE any kind of blog or announcement page about crimes. This is definitely a wave of crimes: 10 scary robberies within 2 weeks is a wave! Maybe they were waiting for a tsunami or something, to actually make this public. They have this site here, http://lapdcrimemaps.org/, but it only records crimes for 7 days, and doesn't seem to have these robberies on it.

I talked with the Northeast Watch Commander, Sargent Milewski about this just now. She was very pleasant and forthcoming, and said there was supposed to be a press conference about this string of crimes tonight, but she wasn't sure when. So you guys got me, instead.

If you know this area at all, I would consider Rowena EXTREMELY safe, and I walk on it nearly every night. And it's only maybe one long block between these 2 restaurants, quite well lit, with foot and street traffic.

From Sargent Milewski:

There have been 10 robberies in the last 2 weeks, 6 near Glendale and Sunset, and 4 near Hyperion and Rowena (like the one above.) They have all been at gun or knifepoint, by 2 young (15?) Hispanic males. Sometimes just a cell phone is taken, sometimes a wallet, and they happen from evening to early morning - last one was 3:35 last night. (I was there at 3 AM.)

All attacks have been on single males. At this point, the Sargent said that after thorough investigations, they are sure they aren't hate crimes, but robberies. Well, I don't think so (said in a sing-songy voice.) They sound like attacks on gays to me, when they don't always rob. (Could have been helpful if the writer to Metblogs mentioned if that man was gay.)

In any case, I hope they get these creeps very very soon. You can believe that I will be on the alert, myself, now that I finally know about this. Get out of my 'hood.