If so, it’s not clear yet how they’ll be called to account for it.
Fort Worth cops raid a gay bar and put one customer in intensive care. Seven men were arrested. The police chief says that the violence of the cops was because – wait for it – the cops were hit on [link]:
“You’re touched and advanced in certain ways by people inside the bar, that’s offensive,” he said. “I’m happy with the restraint used when they were contacted like that.“
This is simply incredible. Does anyone honestly believe that a bunch of cops entering a gay bar armed with plastic cuffs to check for drunkenness would be cruised and hit on by the customers? I mean: seriously. Only a pathological homophobe would think such a thing – and the police chief needs to withdraw this absurd statement, which is denied by all the eye-witnesses.
He didn’t. A spokesperson insists that he did not mean to justify any injury. Even as the Texas Alcohol Beverage Commission cited agents for 19 policy violations. Jacquielynn Floyd at the Dallas News:
This is not looking good for anybody who still maintains that the joint TABC-Fort Worth police operation was all about protecting and serving.
Instead, the findings to date lend credence to the unhappy suspicion that a bunch of geeked-up lawmen thought it might be good fun to roust a bunch of gay people.
On the meat of the matter:
[T]here’s an ugly and unprofessional whiff of “gay panic” about the police report, which seems to say, “We didn’t use excessive force. But if we did, how can you blame us? We were groped by gay men!”
Even if the groping tale were true, would it excuse breaking somebody’s head? If women got a pass for cracking the skull of any man who made an unwelcome pass in a bar, there would be an alarming rise in the incidence of head injuries.
But this is no laughing matter. If the “grope defense” isn’t true – if, in fact, it’s a convenient lie faked up to appeal to heterosexual superiors who might sympathize with the officers’ alleged discomfort – then it’s despicable. If it’s a lie, it’s blatant, cynical discrimination in its ugliest form.