A Raid at a Club in Texas Leaves a Man in the Hospital and Gay Advocates Angry

ima_drummer2k · Aug 28, 2009

I'm usually one to give the benefit of doubt to the authorities on stories like this, but this one seems really dispicable. I mean, going into a bar and roughing people up for drinking?? Isn't that what most people do at bars? Per the Chronicle, 3 of the agents have been FIRED (not suspended) because of this.

FORT WORTH — The grand opening sign still hangs above the door of the Rainbow Lounge, but the recently opened dance club has already become a rallying point for gay men and lesbians here, after a raid by law enforcement last week left one man hospitalized with a head injury and prompted complaints of brutality.

The raid in the early hours of June 28 by Fort Worth police officers and agents from the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission has set off a political uproar and galvanized gay advocates in Fort Worth, who have traditionally been less vocal than in Dallas and Houston. After years of keeping a low profile, gay men and lesbians in Fort Worth say they are furious, and their complaints have spread on the Internet, attracting support from gay rights groups across the country.

They have organized protests and formed a new organization, Fairness Fort Worth, to keep track of various investigations into the incident that have begun or been requested. They also have taken up collections and organized a benefit concert to help the injured.

“It has brought this community together so tight — it’s almost impermeable now,” said Randy Norman, the manager of the lounge.

The incident has drawn even more attention because of its timing; it came on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riot in New York City, widely considered to be the start of the gay rights movement.

Law enforcement officials have begun an investigation into the accusations of brutality, and internal affairs officers from the state liquor authority were interviewing employees of the club on Friday afternoon, sifting through conflicting accounts of what had happened.

Fort Worth’s police chief, Jeffrey W. Halstead, initially stood behind his officers, saying Monday that patrons had provoked the scuffle by making sexual gestures toward officers.

But as the week went on, Chief Halstead backed away from that stance. By Thursday, he had ordered an inquiry, suspended operations with the state beverage commission and promised to give police officers “multicultural training.” He declined a request for an interview.

“Make no mistake, if our officers acted in error, this department will address the problem,” Chief Halstead said in an open letter to the community posted on the city’s Web site on Thursday. Chief Halstead said the state agents, not his officers, had been the ones who had taken the hospitalized man into custody.

Alan Steen, the administrator of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, has put two officers involved in the raid on desk duty and said an inquiry would be conducted.

Several witnesses said six police officers and two liquor control agents used excessive force as they arrested people during the raid.

Chad Gibson, a 26-year-old computer technician from Euless, about 15 miles northeast of Fort Worth, suffered a concussion, a hairline fracture to his skull and internal bleeding after officers slammed his head into a wall and then into the floor, witnesses and family members said. Mr. Gibson was still hospitalized on Friday evening as doctors monitored a blood clot in his brain, his mother, Karen Carter, said.

Another patron suffered broken ribs, and a third had a broken thumb, said Todd Camp, the founder and artistic director of Q. Cinema, a gay film festival in Fort Worth. Mr. Camp, a former journalist, said he was celebrating his 43rd birthday in the bar when the police arrived at 1:05 a.m.

The officers entered the bar without announcing themselves, witnesses said. Earlier in the night, they had visited two other bars looking for violations of alcohol compliance laws. Those bars do not cater to gay patrons, and the officers had made nine arrests at those establishments on public intoxication charges, officials said.

“They were hyped up,” Mr. Camp said of the officers in the Rainbow Lounge raid. “They came in charged and ready for a fight. They were just telling people they were drunk or asking them if they were drunk, and, if they mouthed off, arresting them.”

More than 20 people were taken out of the bar for questioning, handcuffed with plastic ties and, in some cases, were forced to lie face down in the parking lot, witnesses said. Five were eventually booked on charges of public drunkenness, the police said.

In a statement released Sunday, the police said that two of those arrested had made “sexually explicit movements” toward the officers. Another was arrested after he grabbed a state agent’s groin, the statement said.

Several witnesses dispute that account, saying they had not seen anyone harass the officers. So many questions have been raised about the police account that on Friday afternoon, Mayor Mike Moncrief asked the United States attorney for the Northern District of Texas, James T. Jacks, to review the Police Department’s investigation.

Tom Anable, a 55-year-old accountant who said he was in the bar during the raid, said that for more than a half-hour the officers entered the bar repeatedly in groups of three and escorted people out. Then around 1:40 a.m., he said, the officers started to get rougher, throwing one young man down hard on a pool table.

Minutes later, one of the state agents approached Mr. Gibson, who was standing on steps to a lounge at the back of the bar with a bottle of water in his hands, and tapped him on the shoulder, Mr. Anable said. Mr. Gibson turned and said, “Why?”

Then the officer, who has not been identified, twisted Mr. Gibson’s right arm behind his back, grabbed his neck, swung him off the steps and slammed his head into the wall of a hallway leading to the restrooms, Mr. Anable said. The agent then forced Mr. Gibson to the floor, Mr. Anable said.

“Gibson didn’t touch the officer,” Mr. Anable said. “He didn’t grope him.”

Two police officers and a second state agent arrived and helped subdue Mr. Gibson, kneeling on his back. A lounge employee, Lindsey Thompson, 23, said she saw an officer slam Mr. Gibson’s head into the floor while he was prone with his hands cuffed behind him.

The raid prompted swift action. Hours later, more than 100 people were protesting on the steps of the Tarrant County Courthouse. As the week went on, calls for an independent investigation grew, with a state senator, a group of local business leaders and two churches joining the chorus.

Yet some gay residents said the outcry had been loud in part because what happened at Rainbow Lounge was uncharacteristic for this city of 750,000 people. “This has been unnerving, I know, to a lot of people in Fort Worth because it’s not the Fort Worth we know,” said Joel Burns, a gay member of the City Council. “There is a lot of scratching of people’s heads.”

Kathleen Hicks, a council member who represents the neighborhood where the bar is located, said the accusations of police brutality have rattled the city government and warrant an independent investigation. She added that she had heard no complaints about the bar before the raid.

“It has caused a lot of soul searching within City Hall and beyond,” Ms. Hicks said. “Fort Worth has been able to move quietly along and avoid all the tension and strife that you have seen in other cities, but sometimes you need to have tension and strife. I hope that this will be a wake-up call.”

LINK
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gifford1967 · Aug 28, 2009

ima_drummer2k said:

I'm usually one to give the benefit of doubt to the authorities on stories like this, but this one seems really dispicable. I mean, going into a bar and roughing people up for drinking?? Isn't that what most people do at bars? Per the Chronicle, 3 of the agents have been FIRED (not suspended) because of this.
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I'm surprised that disciplinary action was so swift and severe, especially without clear video of the incident. Something tells me that there is a behind the scenes story here.

Oski2005 · Aug 28, 2009

This was the cover story of last weeks Houston Press: http://www.houstonpress.com/2009-08-20/news/gay-panic-in-cowtown

The officers said they were "looking for underage drinkers," Guttery recalled. No one said anything, except one of the officers who mockingly remarked, "Oooo, it got real quiet out here."

Guttery, a 24-year-old Army veteran who manages a jewelry store, knew he shouldn't say anything but did: "That's because we are of age, officer." Immediately the officer wanted to know who spoke up, and when Guttery stepped forward, the cop told him to put down his drink and put his hands behind his back — he was being arrested for public intoxication. "I'm 6-8, 250 pounds and I had just finished my second drink," Guttery recalled. "I might have had enough to have a loose tongue, but not a loose walk or anything like that."

Guttery said he was roughly "bulldozed" through the bar crowd and loaded into a paddy wagon filled with Hispanic men from the Rosedale Saloon and Cowboy Palace, two bars that were "inspected" earlier in the evening by the same squad. After he sat in the locked van for about 30 minutes, the doors swung open and a Fort Worth police officer ordered him out onto Jennings Avenue, outside the bar. He was about to be let off the hook.

One of Guttery's drinking companions was his nephew who works for the city. He dropped the name of a police supervisor to one of the officers at the scene and led him to believe Guttery was a city employee as well. "The officer that let me go said that city employees shouldn't be hanging around this part of town, which I took to mean the gay area of town," Guttery recounted. "That's absolutely ludicrous, but that's what he said."
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across110thstreet · Aug 28, 2009

here's a release from the TABC, where they plainly state that the agents involved violated procedures, like failing to report the injuries or the use of force, failure to conduct pre-raid inspections in the proper attire, etc.

the agents were working with the FWPD task force without approval and even their supervisor failed to take the appriate action knowing they were in violation...

http://www.tabc.state.tx.us/home/press_releases/2009/20090806.asp

a bunch of mavericks, so to speak!

Rocket River · Aug 28, 2009

Typical Life when you are a member of a Minority group . . . .

Rocket River

DaDakota · Aug 28, 2009

Dang............this is sickening.

DD

Landlord Landry · Aug 28, 2009

for some reason, this doesn't suprise me that this happened in Ft. Worth.

thugLove · Aug 30, 2009

Landlord Landry said:

for some reason, this doesn't suprise me that this happened in TEXAS.
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Fixed.

Vinsanity · Aug 31, 2009

Who here was at Zu Bar in Clear Lake when they did the raid and sprayed pepper spray all over the entire crowd? I was there. Zu bar for those who don't remember is what the place was called before it was Banana Joes, and now I think its some redneck place called Big Texas. There were girls who's eyes were burned from the pepper spray, they roughed a bunch of people up, threw people into a paddy wagon and all of this was because they heard that someone under age had been served alcohol. I think many of the clear lake cops were sacked after this.

I know there is someone on this board who must remember this or was there. It was around 1998 if my memory serves me correctly...

Mathloom · Sep 1, 2009

Question...

Public intoxication = If you are drunk in a bar, that is against the law?

BaMcMing · Sep 1, 2009

Mathloom said:

Question...

Public intoxication = If you are drunk in a bar, that is against the law?
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http://blog.austindefense.com/2006/...c-intoxication-texas-penal-code-section-4902/

I guess if they feel you are a threat to those around you, it doesn't matter where you are.

Reminds me of Ron White's stand-up.... "I was trying to be drunk in a bar, and they THREW me into public!..."

pgabriel · Sep 22, 2009

Article about TABC

DALLAS — The Texas alcohol agency under fire for its raid at a gay bar rarely punishes its officers for misconduct, and officers' supervisors are usually the ones who conduct disciplinary investigations. Experts say that method increases the likelihood of flawed probes.

An Associated Press review of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission's internal affairs logs found that all but 39 of the 234 allegations of excessive force or unprofessional conduct against agents since 2004 have been closed without disciplinary action. Moreover, in nearly every excessive force case AP reviewed, the accused agents' bosses headed the investigations.

The allegations included officers improperly tackling, punching and using pepper spray. The agency has a reputation for heavy-handedness and garnered national attention in 2006 when state legislators forced it to cancel a program that aggressively sought to curb public drunkenness through stings in bars.

The commission has again drawn scrutiny from its June raid at a Fort Worth gay bar that put a patron in the hospital for a week. Two agents and their supervisor were fired, and an investigation is ongoing.

Experts in police practices say it's common for internal affairs cases to be closed without disciplinary action because they often can't be proven.

But allowing officers' supervisors to investigate allegations of excessive force is unusual for large or mid-size organizations, experts say. Conducting a probe like that "seriously calls into question the integrity of the investigation," said Jon Shane, an assistant professor at New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

The TABC's policy is similar to those of other Texas agencies with law enforcement authority, said Alan Steen, the commission's administrator since 2003.

Steen acknowledged there were problems early in his tenure with the thoroughness of some misconduct investigations, but that the process has improved since new officers were hired to run the internal affairs unit. He said he's comfortable with the accused agents' supervisors investigating such claims as long as there's adequate training and oversight.

The commission's 275 agents enforce the laws regulating the sale, possession and consumption of alcoholic beverages. They also have the authority to make arrests for other offenses.

Thirty-four other states have similar boards with agents who are peace officers. How much authority each agency has varies, but Texas is one of the most aggressive, said Ted Mahony, the National Liquor Law Enforcement Association's president and chief investigator for Massachusetts' state commission.

The AP found 46 allegations of excessive force were made against 36 TABC agents since 2004. Nearly half came in 2005, the height of the agency's public drunkenness crackdown. All but five of the 46 were dismissed without disciplinary action. In two instances, agents received counseling for lesser offenses. Three allegations are pending.

In compiling its own data, the TABC tracks excessive force by the number of complaints received instead of the number of officers accused. Using that measure, the agency's data shows 36 complaints since 2004. TABC spokeswoman Carolyn Beck said the number is minuscule compared to the more than 108,000 citations issued during that period.

The AP tabulated its figures by counting each time an allegation was made against an officer.

The AP's findings indicate TABC agents have faced excessive force allegations at about the same rate as the Austin Police Department.

Sam Walker, emeritus professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, said he would expect agents working for state liquor boards to be accused of excessive force much less than city cops.

"It's just common sense that there would be fewer (cases) in that kind of enforcement situation than on the street in high-crime neighborhoods," he said.

However, Mahony said agents often face situations in which force is required because officers have to handle people who are drunk and don't cooperate.

One recent incident underscores the questions surrounding the TABC's process.

It involved a Victoria-based agent shown on a security video appearing to tackle a bar patron inside the club. Based on the video, an assistant district attorney in Victoria County declined to prosecute the patron for resisting arrest, but the TABC decided the agent didn't do anything wrong.

Andy Pena, who heads TABC's internal affairs, said the agent, Jeff Rendon, appropriately subdued a man who earlier tried to avoid arrest. The patron has filed a federal lawsuit against Rendon and another agent.

It's the third excessive-force allegation against Rendon since he joined TABC in 2004, the most of any agent in that time period. One was ruled unfounded after Rendon's supervisor investigated. The other was closed as justified even though TABC officials never contacted the person who allegedly was roughed up.

Beck said Rendon is on administrative leave for an unrelated matter. He didn't return AP's phone messages.

___

Associated Press writer Andre Coe contributed to this report.
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rhadamanthus · Mar 22, 2011

Ft. Worth pays, admits no wrongdoing in gay bar raid

FORT WORTH — Fort Worth leaders will pay nearly half a million dollars to a man severely injured in a raid on a gay bar two years ago.

The City Council on Tuesday approved a $400,000 settlement with Chad Gibson. He says he was the victim of excessive force by Fort Worth police and the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission in the Rainbow Lounge raid in 2009.

The city has said the settlement of is not any admission of liability but avoids time-consuming and costly litigation. (Star-Telegram: Man suffered head injury; another had torn rotator cuff.)

Two agents and a supervisor with the state’s liquor board were later fired, and three Fort Worth police officers were suspended. Both agencies determined no excessive force was used.

The state liquor board says it’s also considering settling with Gibson the separate claims he filed against that agency.
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Note: No criminal charges (that I am aware of) against the guys who beat this guy damn near to death. But don't worry guys, this does not mean that you should be wary around police et. al. - that would be crazy!

ChievousFTFace · Mar 22, 2011

rhadamanthus said: ↑

Note: No criminal charges (that I am aware of) against the guys who beat this guy damn near to death. But don't worry guys, this does not mean that you should be wary around police et. al. - that would be crazy!
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I've lived in Fort Worth and I respect police... but they are the scum of the earth there. Dirty good ole boys.

Bandwagoner · Mar 22, 2011

They made 9 arrests previous to that.

We need better cops.

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A Raid at a Club in Texas Leaves a Man in the Hospital and Gay Advocates Angry

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