UPDATE ON FT WORTH GAY BAR RAID

Chad Gibson's mother spoke out about her son's injuries and the incident at the Rainbow Lounge to Dallas' Channel 8 news. Here's the piece that ran yesteday...

Also, on Instant Tea, which is the official weblog of the Dallas Voice, reporter Tammye Nash posted the following comment yesterday:

I just had a phone conversation with a source close to Chad Gibson’s family. I was told that yes, the bleeding has stopped, but that he has been having severe headaches today.

And just a note about Instant Tea poster “Pro Police”: I don’t know who this person is, or what his/her source of information is. I do know that people are not kept in the hospital in ICU for four days for a simple concussion. And I am pretty sure that the doctors at JPS Hospital are in a much better position to determine the extent of Chad Gibson’s injury.

For those who may think that Chad was, as the police claimed, suffering from alcohol poisoning, the Dallas/Ft Worth Channel 11 News ran an article yesterday that quoted Chad's sister Kristy Morgan's answer to that question. She said that "her brother's alcohol level was at .2 [and that] .08 is the legal limit. He was at .2. You have to be at .4 to have true alcohol poisoning and he was not close to that."

Although Chad was intoxicated, he certainly wasn't even close to the level of alcohol poisoning. He was also with a group who had a designated driver who would take them home which showed a great deal of personal responsibility on their part.

What makes no sense to me is why was anyone arrested for "public intoxication" when they were inside a bar and not creating any kind of "public nuisance" outside?

I suppose it's only a matter of time before people start getting arrested inside restaurants for contributing to the problem of "public obesity!"

I am aware that an overwhelming majority of police officers are good, law-abiding citizens who have very difficult and very dangerous jobs to do everyday. But there is clearly something seriously wrong with some of our country's law enforcement officials and if something isn't done soon and those individuals are allowed to continue with callous and illegal tactics that show others how easy it is to get away with, we WILL end up with a Third Reich style police force.

FT WORTH GAY BAR RAIDED ON STONEWALL ANNIVERSARY

At approximately 1:00 am on June 28th, the Ft Worth Police department along with the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) entered the Rainbow Lounge, a new gay bar open only a few weeks, to supposedly conduct a "routine" alcohol beverage code inspection.

These inspections have been done before but they were always handled in a low-key manor. A couple of police would come in, look around and then ask the owner or bartender a few questions before filling out their forms. If there was no overly loud music and no fights or loud arguments going on and no one was making out in the bathrooms, they simply left without incident. This one however, turned out to be anything but routine.

According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

Witnesses say that police arrived at the nightclub about 1 a.m. Sunday and arrested seven people and that one of those arrested suffered a fractured skull during the takedown and is at a Fort Worth hospital.

That person is Chad Gibson who was knocked unconscious and is in serious condition with an injury that has caused bleeding on his brain. This may very well require delicate and dangerous brain surgery to alleviate.

In their written report, the police claimed that Gibson was "resisting arrest" and had to be “placed on the ground to control and apprehend him.” But The general manager of the Rainbow Lounge and several patrons disputed the police account, saying officers used excessive force to make arrests.

Chris Hightower of Fort Worth, a friend of Gibson who was with him that night, said:

"He was just walking to the bathroom when an officer grabbed him and shoved him against a wall and pulled his head back. He was then thrown to the ground and three other officers were on him."

The police report also claimed that many of the patrons verbally harrassed them and one patron even assaulted a TABC agent by grabbing his groin while another made “sexually explicit movements towards another officer.”

To counter those claims, the GLBT publication Dallas Voice reported:

Rainbow Lounge owner J.R. Schrock said claims that patrons made sexual advances to the officers and that one patron groped an officer were lies.

“The groping of the police officer — really? We’re gay, but we’re not dumb,” Schrock said to the crowd that gathered at the bar Sunday afternoon [for a demonstration against the incident]. “That is a lie, and I am appalled by it."

Other eyewitness accounts said that the police were very loud and abrasive as they moved through the lounge, clearly trying to intimidate the patrons.

Having lived through the era of having only mafia owned gay bars to go to and then having to deal with indiscriminate police raids, I find this incident to be doubly appalling. First, because it even happened at all and second, because they chose to do it on the anniversary of the Stonewall riots which, I'm absolutely sure, could not have been an "accident" or "coincidence."

I'm hoping that the officers and supervisors involved in this overtly homophobic raid don't just get a slap-on-the-wrist reprimand but are suspended without pay and/or outright fired. This is not something that should be happening in a large metropolitan city, or anywhere else for that matter, in 2009.

UPDATE...
Unfortunately I just learned that the Dallas Voice just published a report that said:

Senior Editor Tammye Nash is just now leaving the hospital in Fort Worth where she spoke with Chad Gibson’s family. Gibson is in intensive care after reportedly suffering head trauma when he was thrown to the ground by police early Sunday during a raid of the Rainbow Lounge. Nash said she visited with Gibson’s mother and his sister this morning, and they told her that his condition has worsened. Gibson reportedly has a brain bleed — also known as intracerebral hemorraghing — and the clot inside his skull has gotten larger and shifted, which is a bad sign. Gibson is scheduled for another CT scan at 10 a.m. today. After that, doctors will decide whether the clot can be shrunk with medication or whether they need to perform surgery. Stay tuned, and keep Gibson in your thoughts and prayers.

I now amend my last comment to say that I hope that the subhuman, homophobic police who are responsible for Chad's injuries be given the maximum penalties possible under the law. They could not have been operating under any kind of "approved" police procedures and should be held criminally responsible!

POSTED IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE
STONEWALL RIOTS
JUNE 28TH, 1969
AND OF ALL THE PIONEERING SOULS WHO WERE BRAVE ENOUGH TO STAND UP TO THE POLICE, THE INSTITUTIONS AND ALL OF SOCIETY TO FOUND TODAY'S GAY ACTIVIST MOVEMENT AND FOREVER ESTABLISH THE LEGITIMATE AND VERY REAL EXISTENCE OF ALL OF US.

WE, AND ALL FUTURE GENERATIONS
WILL BE FOREVER IN YOUR DEBT.

THANK YOU!