Fort Worth Police Better Clarify Gay Bar "Check"

The fall out from the brutal police raid on the Rainbow Lounge on the 40th anniversary of similarly brutish behavior at the Stonewall Inn in 1969. The Dallas Morning News is not buying the bullshit being spun by the Forth Worth Police Department and now the Fort Worth City Council seems to be voicing reservations as well. By all accounts - other than those offered by the police involved - the police action was NOT a routine bar check and instead a totally unprovoked and unjustified use of grossly excessive force which has left one bar patron hospitalized with possible brain injuries. Unfortunately, too often those who go into law enforcement seem to be macho bullies who lack the temperament and character to be empowered by a badge. In my opinion, it sounds like some homophobe bullies wearing badges thought that they had some fun busting up the fairie boys. Here are highlights from the Dallas Morning News:

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The Fort Worth Police Department still has some explaining to do about what happened early Sunday at a southside gay bar called the Rainbow Lounge. Or some clarifying or some illuminating or some supplementary detailing – anything to mitigate the apparently self-administered public-relations shot-to-the-foot it suffered after what it keeps calling a routine "bar check."

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'Cause – Problem No. 1 – bar patrons who were there say it wasn't a "check," it was a "raid." Problem No. 2, this particular "check" ended with a kid in the intensive-care unit with a head injury.

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Problem No. 3, in what I can only hope is a spectacularly infelicitous coincidence, all this took place on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Raid.

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[W]itnesses say the offiers showed up ready to make arrests, their fists full of plastic zip-cuffs. "They were hyped up. They were loaded for bear," said Todd Camp, a veteran journalist who was there celebrating his birthday with friends. "They were just randomly grabbing people, telling them they were drunk." Camp told me he has been in bars during TABC/police "checks" before, "and it was never anything like this." Usually, he said, officers discreetly walk through, looking for anybody who has had too much. This was different. "I hate to say I was afraid of my own police department, but I was," Camp said. His description of frightened, distraught patrons just does not seem to square with

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And the flames of indiscriminate opinion about Texas being a stagnant backwater of vicious, insular, hate-crazed xenophobes dance higher. So, Fort Worth, we need some answers, please, and quickly. This is no time to stonewall.
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Fort Worth City Council seems to understand that this raid is a PR disaster for the City and as WFAA-TV is reporting, Council wants answers as to how this occurred. Here are some highlights:

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The nation's largest gay and lesbian civil rights organization has called for an investigation, and they're not alone. Council member Kathleen Hicks said she wants the community to know that there is a recourse for complaints such as the ones that arose after officers were accused of violence without just cause. Seven were arrested and one hospitalized after violence broke out during a raid at the Rainbow Lounge in Fort Worth. Hicks called witness reports and Chad Gibson's brain injury disturbing.

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News 8 talked with council member Joel Burns shortly after he visited Gibson in the hospital Monday afternoon. "It's my hope that the fact that this is a gay bar and the violence that happened there are not in any way tied - obviously as someone who loves Fort Worth [and] as someone who is gay - I don't want those two things to be connected," he said.

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Neither the TABC nor Fort Worth police revealed why the bar was selected for what police called a bar check. But, Halstead said the checks always result from either citizen or law enforcement concerns. The bar's owner questioned that and pointed out the Rainbow Lounge has been open for less than two weeks.