Thanks to Jaysays.com & Dymsum's blog,
for being in the forefront of reporting this on their blogs. If you haven't heard about this yet, you will as this story continues to spread throughout the cyber world. In fact I was please to see this reported on the Rachel Meadow Show tonight.
I strongly encourage everyone to tell as many people as you know about this and not allow this story of intimation and harassment to be buried by the corporate media.
This is yet another reminder of the enormous hostility we face in this country as gays continue to move forward in our quest to attain equal rights. It is no coincidence that this raid happened at the same time that gays were celebrating and commemorating Stonewall.
The pathetic denial and cover up by the police will be exposed for what it really is.................... DISCRIMINATION!

Another First Hand Account Indicates Police Targeted Gays in Ft. Worth Raid.

29 June 2009 Author: jaysays

More and more eyewitness accounts of the police raid of the Ft. Worth gay bar, Rainbow Lounge, are being circulated, many via the Facebook page set up for information on the raid. One account by a straight ally who was not arrested or ticketed in spite of admitting to police that she was drunk indicates:

I was appalled to read the official statement issued by the police. The allegations of assault, groping, and resisting arrest were complete fabrications. Men parted like the red sea wherever the police were. No one was groping them.

I WILL NOT SIT BACK AND BE SILENT. I WILL CONTINUE TO SHARE MY STORY AND PROTEST ALONGSIDE THE COMMUNITY THAT HAS MADE ME FEEL SO WELCOME. I ENTERED THE BAR A PATRON ON SATURDAY NIGHT, AND BECAUSE OF THE POLICE BRUTALITY AND DISCRIMINATION I WITNESSED I LEFT AN ACTIVIST.

– [Alison Egert]

Yet again, witness accounts of the evening completely contradict the police allegations of resisting arrest, groping of officers and lewd sexual gestures by patrons.

Ft. Worth City Councilman Joel Burns released the following statement yesterday evening:

We want all citizens of Texas and Fort Worth to know and be assured that the laws and ordinances of our great State and City will be applied fairly, equally and without malice or selective enforcement. 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, June 28, 2009.

It is unfortunate that this incident occurred in Fort Worth and even more so to have occurred on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall protests. Unlike 40 years ago, though, the people of this community have elective representation that will make sure our government is accountable and that the rights of all of its citizens are protected. We are working together with our Mayor, Police Chief, the City of Fort Worth Human Relations Commission, and our State Legislative colleagues to get a complete and accurate accounting of what occurred.

Rest assured that neither the people of Fort Worth, nor the city government of Fort Worth, will tolerate discrimination against any of its citizens. And know that the GLBT Community is an integral part of the economic and cultural life of Fort Worth.

Every Fort Worth citizen deserves to have questions around this incident answered and we are all working aggressively toward that end.

http://jaysays.com/

It’s All Just a Little Bit of History Repeated: Ft. Worth Gay Bar Raided

29 June 2009 Author: jaysays

Saturday night, I shut jaysays.com down to honor the 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall Inn riots. I sat there contemplating how life has changed for LGBT people since that night forty years ago. It was midnight central time. Little did I know that in less than an hour, history would repeat itself as police raided the Rainbow Lounge in Ft. Worth, Texas.

According to the Ft. Worth Police Department, officers were doing routine raids and the Rainbow Lounge just happened to be on their list. Reports indicate that six Ft. Worth Police officers and two Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission officers participated in the raid.

Now, I’ve been inside of a straight bar during one of these routine checks. Two agents walked the bar requesting identification from patrons. In this case, one man was under age and had been served with alcohol. A citation was issued to the bar and the agents left with the underage individual, presumably taking him into custody.

In this case, EIGHT officers entered the bar and arrested seven patrons for public intoxication. The Ft. Worth Police Department claims that those arrested were obviously very intoxicated and made sexual gestures at the officers. One man is hospitalized after, as police allege, he grabbed one officer’s groin (something any gay man might do in a similar situation). However, this man was then “taken down” by police, fracturing his skull.

Eye witness accounts of the raid differ greatly from the police accounts. One person at the bar has indicated publicly that he watched as the first arrest occurred. A man standing at the bar took a drink of his cocktail and was thrust down on the bar by the officer and handcuffed [police were using plastic detention cuffs].

Another eyewitness indicated that he was sitting with friends on the patio area when officers came outside. They then asked why everyone had gotten so quiet. When one group continued their conversation, officers then arrested one of the participants.

No eyewitness account currently publish has indicated any sexual gestures or other such behavior being directed at the officers.

This raid, coincided not only with the 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall Inn raid, but it marked the eve of the Million Gay March in Dallas. It is reasonable to say that someone on the Ft. Worth police department would have known that a massive march was underway in neighboring Dallas. Therefore, is it too much to conclude that the timing was no coincidence?

As the day progressed, the front page of jaysays.com, which had been a tribute to Stonewall 1969, changed from a symbol of peace to a symbol of outrage – the Ft. Worth Police Department sent a message to the LGBT community last night We must repeat the message of our predecessors, “Stonewall was a Riot; Now We Need a Revolution.”

http://jaysays.com/2009/06/its-all-just-a-little-bit-of-history-repeated-ft-worth-gay-bar-raided/

Fort Worth Police Statement Concerning "Rainbow Lounge" Raid

June 28, 2009

http://www.the33tv.com/news/kdaf-rainbow-lounge-fwpd-statement-story,0,1536646.story

Police raid a gay bar in Texas on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising.

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/06/29/stonewall-texas/

Fort Worth police better start clarifying gay bar 'check

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."

'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.

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.

The landmark date marks a 1969 clash between New York City police and club patrons, widely viewed as the catalyst for the modern American gay-rights movement.

The short version is this: About 1 a.m. Sunday, two Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission agents and six FWPD cops showed up at the club for an inspection.

These checks, which have gotten a lot of attention in the last few years, target bars in search of patrons who are obviously intoxicated.

Well, 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.

At this point, however, accounts between patrons and police diverge.

Police Chief Jeff Halstead has said only that there will be a thorough investigation.

But in an earlier official statement, police said they encountered hostile, argumentative drunks, some of whom "made sexually explicit movements" (my imagination runs wild) toward the officers. One young patron allegedly "assaulted [a] TABC agent by grabbing the TABC agent's groin."

OK, hold on. First, witnesses say the officers 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.

"They were shoving patrons," Camp said, "asking, 'How much have you had to drink?' "

Maybe you can call that a difference in perception, a disagreement over the degree of aggressiveness on both sides.

But there are flat contradictions about how Chad Gibson was injured. The Dallas Voice reported Monday that Gibson is hospitalized with bleeding around his brain.

"He was taken down hard," said Camp, with "four or five" officers wrestling him to the floor inside the club.

Cellphone photos shot by patrons and posted to blogs show a person being held facedown by officers in a short hallway inside the club, then show a dent in the wall where his head was apparently banged.

But a Fort Worth police spokesman told me Gibson was injured outside, when he fell and struck his head because he was so drunk.

"He was the one that groped the TABC agent," said Sgt. Pedro Criado. "He was injured by falling and hitting his head."

When I asked Sgt. Criado how he identified Gibson as the "groper," he said he was reading from a police report filed by cops on the scene. I asked for further details, but he said I'd have to file a Freedom of Information request.

"The truth will come out. We don't want to make any assumptions," he said. "We got to gather all the facts."

What Camp says, and what other people who claim to have been there say in comments posted to news stories, is that they were scared.

"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 police accounts of being subjected to a drunken, groin-grabbing gantlet during a routine "bar inspection."

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.

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.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/DN-floyd_30met.ART0.State.Edition2.4bb1df1.html