Jul 03, 2009  |  By: Lou Chibbaro Jr.  | COMMENTS     

The police chief in Fort Worth, Texas, has promised an investigation into allegations of misconduct by officers that witnesses say raided a gay bar shortly after midnight June 28 and arrested seven men on charges of “public intoxication.”

One of the arrested men was being treated in a hospital for bleeding in his brain after one or more of the officers knocked him to the floor, where he hit his head, witnesses said.

Police released a statement saying they entered the Rainbow Lounge, a gay club that opened less than a month earlier, to conduct a routine “alcohol beverage code inspection,” not a raid.

The statement says officers arrested seven male customers inside the club after they determined the patrons violated the Texas public intoxication statute, which applies to people inside establishments that sell alcoholic beverages.

Another 13 patrons were taken out of the club by police and questioned but not arrested, a police spokesperson said.

Angry gay activists said the incident mimicked the famous police raid on the Stonewall Inn gay bar in New York’s Greenwich Village exactly 40 years earlier.

Some of the activists believe the arrests on the 40th anniversary of Stonewall were based on trumped up charges. They pointed to accounts by witnesses that police targeted people randomly and who showed no signs of being drunk.

Sgt. Padro Criado, a police spokesperson, confirmed reports by witnesses that the officers on the scene used visual observation to decide who was intoxicated and did not use devices to test alcohol levels on the arrested persons’ breath.

The police statement says at least two customers made “sexually explicit movements” toward two officers and a third customer grabbed the groin of an agent with the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission as the officers and agent walked through the club.

Randy Norman, the Rainbow Lounge’s general manager, called the police claim about the sexually explicit movements and alleged groping of the liquor commission agent “a lie and a slur” against the gay community.

“They were so forceful and abrupt when they came in,” Norman told the Blade. “There’s no way that could have happened.”

Other witnesses told Dallas Voice, an LGBT newspaper, they watched the officers’ movements from the moment police entered the bar and never saw any customers make sexual gestures toward them.

Norman and three other witnesses who gave statements to Dallas Voice said the officers arriving at the club about 1 a.m. June 28 were accompanied by a police paddy wagon and entered the club carrying plastic handcuffs, suggesting their intention was to make arrests.

One of the witnesses, Todd Camp, founder of the Fort Worth LGBT film festival, Q Cinema, said he had been present when Texas Alcohol Beverage Commission agents and police conducted liquor inspections of other bars and “this was not like anything I have ever seen before,” Dallas Voice quoted him as saying.

“People were just grabbed randomly, told they were drunk, spun around, put in handcuffs and taken out,” he told Dallas Voice.

Norman told the Blade in a telephone interview Monday that officers were especially harsh with one of the arrested customers who was later identified as 26-year-old Chad Gibson.

According to Norman, Gibson was walking out of the men’s room holding hands with another man when officers approached to the two men.

“They took their arms and pushed their hands apart and then pushed him against the wall very hard,” Norman said in describing what happened to Gibson.

Norman said officers “pulled his hair back, almost like they were going to break his neck.” When the officers tried to kick his legs apart, Gibson “stumbled and they immediately threw him to the floor,” Norman said.

The police statement says the man later identified as Gibson was intoxicated and injured himself by falling to the floor and landing on his face.

Kristy Morgan, Gibson’s sister, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that her brother may require surgery for his head injury. The Star-Telegram said a police spokesperson identified Gibson as the one who allegedly grabbed the liquor commission agent’s crotch.

“My brother would not do that,” Morgan told the newspaper. “He’s not a big drinker.”

Fort Worth Police Chief Jeff Halstead said that the police action at Rainbow Lounge occurred on the anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall police raid in New York was a coincidence.

“There was never, ever anyone employed with the Fort Worth Police Department who would want to specifically target a location because of the date,” the Star-Telegram quoted him as saying. “That simply did not occur.”

Halstead said police internal affairs investigators were looking into the officers’ action at the club and asked witnesses ...