Ft. Worth police jump the shark

[Occulus]

Via Daily Kos:

Breaking: Raid on Fort Worth Gay Bar (Update x6) Hotlist
by lostboyjim
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Sun Jun 28, 2009 at 12:45:03 PM PDT

A blog post this morning on the Dallas Voice Blog page on the 40th Anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. People were arrested for "Public Intoxication".

This story is now breaking on facebook, with an apparent protest planned for today (location and time still not clearly determined). I have had a brief IM with a reporter who is working on the story, so the event did occur.

The posts on the Dallas voice page are verified to be from a reporter from the Voice, so while they may be a bit "first person-ish", they are from a reporter.

Information as I can compile it below the fold.

* lostboyjim's diary :: ::
*

This information was just culled from the Dallas Voice blog page. The only reply I see so far on that blog says in part:

I don’t know what went down once the police got inside, I was lucky that I was leaving at the exact moment that the first agent was walking in the door, but they already had the outside door person up against the wall in cuffs, and the building surrounded with cars.

Arresting people in a bar for Public Intoxication seems strange, and doing it on the 40th anniversary of Stonewall seems like they are trying to spark another Stonewall.

This is the only site I have been able to find any news about this raid. I will be updating this; this may be a misunderstanding or a setup. As I find out more news today I will be updating this dairy.

I can't comment on this. I'm too angry with the "profession" in general at the moment.

edit: This occurred on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riot.

Another edit: the http://www.star-telegram.com/804/story/1458523.html">Star Telegram has more:

Upset Fort Worth residents protest raid on gay nightclub


By DOMINGO RAMIREZ JR.
[e-mail]
FORT WORTH -- A crowd of more than 100 protesters chanted "No more!" from the steps of the Tarrant County Courthouse Sunday evening as they demanded an investigation into a police raid earlier in the day at a gay night club.

One patron was seriously injured in the raid, several protesters said, as police used excessive force in making seven arrests. Police defended their actions.

Speaker after speaker demanded an inquiry into the late-night raid at the Rainbow Lounge on South Jennings Street.

"I was scared," patron Todd Camp said at the protest Sunday afternoon. "I have never seen anything like this in my life."

The rally lasted about 20 minutes. Some protesters then marched on Main Street, holding signs and waving flags.

A second protest is scheduled for 7 p.m. next Sunday at the Fort Worth Convention Center.

The raid happened to be on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York which began on the night of June 28, 1969, as a protest by gays against police harassment and helped trigger the modern U.S. gay rights movement.

Mods: more than four paragraphs were copied here due to the horrendous practice of calling individual sentences "paragraphs".