Rainbow Lounge Raid
So on the 40'th anniversary of the Stonewall riots a number of policemen entered a recently owned gay bar in Fort Worth Texas and arrested a bunch of people for public intoxication. I've been reading a lot of the articles posted about this issue this morning as I was attempting to find something unbiased on the issue.
On it's face it looks pretty bad.
I've read the police statement taken from the Dallas Voice in which they claimed that this was one of three bars in which the police arrived that day to arrest people. They claim that a number of people made "sexually explicit movements" at the police, and that one patron groped a cop.
Problem is that it doesn't jive. The cops were claiming that a disgruntled bartender had given them a tip that the bar was overserving people, but the bar had only been open for a week and there seems to be a lot of question over whether or not the claims of the police department are true.
The statement claims that they restrained someone by placing him upon the ground, but eye witness accounts differ with the statement regarding the brutality of said hold claiming that the boy was not resisting but that he was terrified and unbalanced. The fact that that boy is now in the ICU for a brain hemorrhage from being slammed to the ground doesn't bode well for the seeming validity of the officers claims.
The more I look into it the more eye witness accounts people get that are counter to the statements of the Fort Worth Police Department. It doesn't look good.
Honestly it kind of looks like some bigoted local cops raided a brand new gay bar in their town in order to intimidate and harass the patrons on the anniversary of the Stonewall riots. It looks kind of like things got out of hand, and then the cops brutalized an innocent young man.
If the guy dies I hope those cops get tried for murder.
Adam
PS- Best articles I found were in local Texas papers, first on the scene and they seem the least biased.
On it's face it looks pretty bad.
I've read the police statement taken from the Dallas Voice in which they claimed that this was one of three bars in which the police arrived that day to arrest people. They claim that a number of people made "sexually explicit movements" at the police, and that one patron groped a cop.
Problem is that it doesn't jive. The cops were claiming that a disgruntled bartender had given them a tip that the bar was overserving people, but the bar had only been open for a week and there seems to be a lot of question over whether or not the claims of the police department are true.
The statement claims that they restrained someone by placing him upon the ground, but eye witness accounts differ with the statement regarding the brutality of said hold claiming that the boy was not resisting but that he was terrified and unbalanced. The fact that that boy is now in the ICU for a brain hemorrhage from being slammed to the ground doesn't bode well for the seeming validity of the officers claims.
The more I look into it the more eye witness accounts people get that are counter to the statements of the Fort Worth Police Department. It doesn't look good.
Honestly it kind of looks like some bigoted local cops raided a brand new gay bar in their town in order to intimidate and harass the patrons on the anniversary of the Stonewall riots. It looks kind of like things got out of hand, and then the cops brutalized an innocent young man.
If the guy dies I hope those cops get tried for murder.
Adam
PS- Best articles I found were in local Texas papers, first on the scene and they seem the least biased.