Outrage, Questions Mount Over Texas Bar Raid
Questions, and outrage, over a police action at a gay bar in Fort Worth continue to mount, with one bar patron still in serious condition after sustaining a head injury.
The incident took place on the fortieth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York, which stemmed from alleged police brutality during a raid on the Stonewall Bar, a gay establishment, in 1969.
Fort Worth officers were conducting a routine inspection of a newly-opened gay bar, the Rainbow Lounge, in the early morning hours of Sunday, June 28, when the incident occurred, according to a June 30 article in the Star-Telegram.
A half-dozen police officers were accompanied by a supervisor and two agents of the Texas Alcoholic Beverages Commission, the article said, and cited Fort Worth Police Chief Jeff Halstead as saying that the injured man had been taken into custody by a TAB Commission agent, not a police officer.
Said Halstead, "They were not my employees."
When the officers and agents entered the bar around 1:00 a.m., they reportedly were subjected to harassment from bar patrons; some made "sexually explicit motions," and another reportedly took hold of an agent's crotch area.
That patron was Chad Gibson, reported the Associated Press in a June 29 story. Gibson then "fell," according to authorities, striking his head hard enough to land him in the hospital in serious condition.
The bar patrons became agitated and the officers called for backup, the story noted.
Twenty patrons of the Rainbow Room were questioned by the police and the agents, with seven arrests being made on the grounds of public intoxication, the Star Tribune article reported.
Halstead went ahead with a previously arranged meeting with GLBT community leaders at a local church, where he sought to reassure members of the gay community and asked for witnesses to come forward.
The article said that Halstead reckoned 500 callers had contacted the Fort Worth police, but out of all those calls, only two were from witnesses.
The police chief appealed for restraint, saying, "We've got to work together.
"Be patient, and you will see that this is just not lip service.
"I will meet with you wherever you want to meet. I will go to your restaurants, your house, we can eat barbecue, whatever you want to do.
"But we've got to talk."
Witnesses were encouraged to call the internal affairs department of the Fort Worth police at 817-392-4270.
Meantime, local residents and leaders expressed anger and concern over the incident, with 100 demonstrators gathering in front of police headquarters on the evening of June 28.
Protests and media attention focused on the incident with lightning speed, thanks in part to social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter; that, in turn, may have helped drive the media's immediate coverage of the events at the bar, reported a June 30 Star-Telegram article.
About two hours after the 1:00 a.m. inspection, a Facebook page appeared calling for demonstrators to show up that evening. Said protest organizer Kyle Trentham, "By the time we woke up, it had spread like wildfire.
"It's just amazing how quickly we got people and got organized to get people going."
Sites like Facebook were primary sources of information to GLBT rights groups like the Human Rights Campaign, said HRC senior communications and media center manager Michael Cole.
Cole reckoned that the social networking outlets were crucial to getting word of the incident out. "It was important for us because they are the eyes and ears across the country," Cole said.
Cole went on to note the speed at which word can now travel, saying, "The fascinating thing about new media is that years ago it would have taken a few days for it to percolate."
Such instant and widespread attention could have turned up the heat early on for city officials, who were prompt in calling for a thorough investigation. Fort Worth city councilman Joel Burns stated on June 29, "I've asked for as thorough a report as possible... to reassure folks that the police are not singling out any group," the AP article said, while the city's mayor pro tem, Kathleen Hicks, proclaimed herself "very concerned."
The Dallas Voice quoted Burns further. The councilmember, who appeared at the protest, read from a statement, telling the crowd, "We want all citizens of Texas and Fort Worth to know and be assured that the laws of ordinances of our great state and city will be applied fairly, equally and without malice or selective enforcement."
Added Burns, "We consider this to be part of 'The Fort Worth Way' here.
"As elected representatives of the city of Fort Worth, we are calling for an immediate and thorough investigation of the actions of the city of Fort Worth police and Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission in relation to the incident at the Rainbow Lounge earlier this morning."
The AP article noted that Gibson's sister, Kristy Morgan, dismissed any suggestion that Gibson might have been injured as a result of assaulting an agent, stating, "for anyone to come back and say he did something to provoke this is ludicrous."
According to Halstead, Gibson not only took hold of the agent's groin area, he also vomited and fell due to being drunk.
After he sustained the fall, Gibson reportedly remained conscious. He was taken directly to a local hospital.
But at least one patron depicted the officers' entrance into the establishment and the events that followed in starker terms. George Armstrong was quoted by the AP article as saying that an officer who grabbed him for no reason and threw him to the floor "was yelling at me to stop resisting arrest, but I wasn't doing anything."
Added Armstrong, "It was horrible. I really thought he had broken my shoulder.
"I've never been so embarrassed and humiliated," added Armstrong. "I didn't do anything to him."
The article said that, according to Armstrong, others in the bar were receiving similarly rough treatment.
Armstrong also challenged the report that the officers were subjected to harassing conduct from the bar's patrons.
Others confirmed that some patrons did make lewd gestures at the officers, who reportedly detained the seven individuals placed under arrest for having made obscene gestures at them; but the bar's manager, Randy Norman, also said that the officers' conduct was forceful from the start.
Instead of identifying themselves to Norman and his employees and having a look at the establishment's permit, as normally would be the case, "They just rushed in full force and started arresting people and throwing them on the ground," the manager said, as quoted in a June 30 article posted at the Web site of local news station KDAF, Channel 33.
The article noted that unlike DUI offenses, charges of public intoxication can be brought based on the arresting officer's judgment alone. That criterion, according to the city's Defense Attorney, can lead to abuses.
Said Avery McDaniel, "I think that public intoxication is ripe for being used as a harassment tool for officers.
"Police officers use this as a tool of enforcement when they have nothing else as a way to immediately arrest someone," McDaniel added.
The media has also responded with a certain level of skepticism. Though city officials say the officers did not know that it was the fortieth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, Dallas Morning News columnist Jacquielynn Floyd, in a June 30 item, seemed hard pressed to believe it.
Floyd identified several "problems" with the police account that the incident stemmed from a routine inspection.
"Problem No. 1," wrote Floyd, "bar patrons who were there say it wasn't a 'check,' it was a 'raid.' "
Continued Floyd, "Problem No. 2, this particular 'check' ended with a kid in the intensive-care unit with a head injury."
Floyd added, "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."
Floyd conceded the legitimacy of routine inspections, writing, "I'm certainly willing to believe it is possible to find a drunk in a bar at 1 a.m.
"The TABC carries these out with an eye to curbing public intoxication and drunken driving, as well as reminding bartenders that it is illegal to serve somebody who is already loaded."
Floyd went on to note that when it came to specifics on how the officers conducted themselves, "accounts between patrons and police diverge."
Floyd quoted a journalist who was present at the time, Todd Camp, who said that this "inspection" was far more aggressively executed than others he had seen.
Camp indicated that officers entered the premises prepared for trouble: as Floyd put it, "ready to make arrests, their fists full of plastic zip-cuffs."
Floyd quoted Camp as saying, "They were hyped up. They were loaded for bear.
"They were just randomly grabbing people, telling them they were drunk."
Added Camp, "They were shoving patrons [and] asking, 'How much have you had to drink?' "
As for how Gibson came to be injured, "He was taken down hard," said Camp, claiming that "four or five" lawmen took Gibson to the floor.
Floyd noted that cellphone video images showed several officers on an individual who can been seen lying prone on the floor; images of an indentation in the wall purport to show where the person collided with the wall on the way to the floor.
Floyd quoted Camp as saying, "I hate to say I was afraid of my own police department, but I was," and then goes on to write, "His description of frightened, distraught patrons just does not seem to square with police accounts of being subjected to a drunken, groin-grabbing gantlet during a routine 'bar inspection.' "
Notes Floyd, "Fort Worth is a fine and tolerant city. The police officers I personally know over there are decent, stand-up people.
"But today, in the Twitter-and-blog-enabled process of rapid dissemination, they're getting an ugly reputation."
A June 30 blog at Austin360.com by Michael Barnes also calls into question the timing of the incident.
Wrote Barnes, "Raiding a gay bar on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, which helped inspire the latter-day gay rights movement?
"Might as well bust a soul club on Juneteenth," added Barnes.