Withers: NYC cop accused of using anti-gay slur
[1]
For the past two months New York City police have been trying to close down Chi Chiz [2], a bar and restaurant on Christopher Street. Between July 2009 and January 2010 police officers allegedly have seen four sales of uncontrolled substances in the bar—it caters to black and brown gay men. The club’s owners have charged the police have been over zealous in their administration of the law.
The place was raided on March 5 by a dozen police officers. They shut it down, but the owners went to a judge and they reopened the next night. As the place was minding its business by doing business, some white guy was in front yelling this: “This fag establishment should be closed.” When he was confronted by two activists, Allen Roskoff and Corey Johnson, he called them faggots. 911 was called, the police arrived, and they know him. Why? Because he’s a brother in blue. An undercover cop.
A lawyer for Chi Chiz says a police department representative confirmed the officer is undercover, and has been reassigned to a desk. His identity? No one is talking.
Looking forward to how some of our readers respond. Most will be bothered, but a few will defend the police. As they lovingly did in the case of Henry L. Gates [3]. Probably will argue the club forced the over worked cop to use the word.
[1] http://www.365gay.com/wp-content/uploads/news-police-badge-top.jpg
[2] http://www.gaycitynews.com/articles/2010/04/01/gay_city_news/news/doc4bb4f62652b10229325684.txt
[3] http://www.365gay.com/blog/072109-harvard-african-american-prof-arrested-in-his-own-home/
Judge rules for gay bar in raid case
A judge ruled Thursday that three defendants in an Atlanta gay bar case are not guilty. The prosecutor decided to drop the charges against the other five defendants in the case.
“Municipal Judge Crystal Gaines said city police failed to produce evidence proving that men danced naked without permits or that …
Gay incident reopens Salt Lake City’s Main Street plaza wounds
It’s the wound that won’t heal. The rift that won’t close. And earlier this month, two gay lovers’ purportedly innocuous late-night kiss — though LDS Church officials insist it was far more amorous than that — ripped it wide open. Utah’s simmering religious divide boiled over — once again — at the geographical and philosophical intersection of church and state: the Main Street Plaza in downtown Salt Lake City. “It is a scab that will continue to be peeled away — and may never heal,” says Dani Eyer, the former ACLU director who fought to preserve First Amendment rights on the plaza. Matt Aune and Derek Jones say they held hands, kissed and then squabbled with security guards on the LDS Church-owned square. Salt Lake City police issued a ticket for trespassing. In protest, supporters of the couple staged a “kiss-in” last Sunday outside the plaza and plan another such demonstration today. The LDS Church — a faith to which 60 percent of Utahns belong — defended its right to regulate “inappropriate behavior” on the plaza. “What we’re seeing now is a manifestation of what should have been obvious from the very beginning,” says former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson. “This block of Main Street never should have been conveyed to the LDS Church. It was a recipe for ongoing resentments between the LDS Church and those who are not members.” The church bought the strip of Main — from North Temple to South Temple — in 1999 after then-Mayor Deedee Corradini and the City Council, with the only two non-LDS members dissenting, signed off on the $8.1 million deal. But the controversy burned for five more years as federal courts were asked to settle the prickly issue of whether the church could govern expression on the plaza and whether the city could retain a public right of way (as outlined in the original deal). “It was meant to be for everybody,” Eyer says. “Where people come and go their constitutional rights go with them.” After a 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in 2002, First Amendment activities returned to the plaza. But demonstrations by anti-Mormon protesters — including cries of “whore” and “harlot” hurled at newlywed brides — “sustained divisions” that “reached to the point of hatred” between Mormons and non-Mormons, Anderson says. In the end, he agreed to trade the public easement for cash and LDS land to build a west-side community center.
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COPS: NYC GAY BASHINGS COULD BE LINKED
The NYC Anti-Violence Project has issued a community alert now that the New York City Police Department’s Hate Crimes Bureau thinks several recent anti-gay attacks on the Upper East Side might have come at the hands of the same assailants.
In addition to Joseph Holladay, brutally beaten and robbed, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly now states, “There was an incident in Carl Shurz Park that we believe he [sic] may be associated with two other events—one that happened Saturday morning, the other happened Sunday morning. All of these events happened on the Upper East Side, the 19th precinct.
See COPS: NYC GAY BASHINGS COULD BE LINKED
Towleroad
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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.
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Mexico City Gay Pride Parade Draws Thousands
MEXICO CITY – Thousands of Mexicans marched peacefully through central Mexico City in the 31st Gay Pride March at which they demanded improvements in gay rights, watched over by some 1,500 police.
All transpired in calm at Saturday’s parade, Mexico City police department spokesmen said.
The annual march by lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals, transgender individuals and transvestites began at midday at the Monument of the Angel of Independence and it ended at the Plaza de la Constitucion later in the afternoon.
The participants this year called for maintaining a “separate” profile weeks before the general elections in which the lower house of Congress will be renewed, six governors and 606 mayors elected.
They also demanded improvements in security, health, sexual education and policies of equality to minimize the problems of discrimination that they still face in Mexico. See
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Teen arrested in WABC reporter’s murder
(New York City) New York City Police say a teenager is in custody in the brutal slaying of veteran New York City radio reporter George Weber.
Weber’s body was found Sunday. His ankles were bound, and he was stabbed about 50 times. Wounds on his hands indicate he tried to fight …
Arrest in NYC homophobic, racist slaying
(New York City) New York City Police say Wednesday they have arrested one of the attackers who yelled slurs as they beat an Ecuadorean immigrant to death on a city street, and investigators are looking for a second suspect.
Hakim Scott, 25, was arrested in the Dec. 7 attack on real …
Brothers beaten after attackers thought they were gay
(New York City) Four attackers may have mistaken two brothers walking arm in arm as gay before using an aluminum baseball bat, a bottle and their feet to beat one of them into critical condition. He died Monday in a hospital in New York City, police said.
One of the attackers …
