Tag Archives: police brutality

The head of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission yesterday admitted that his agents violated their own procedures in their raid of the Rainbow Lounge in Fort Worth. The Dallas Voice has an exclusive interview: The administrator of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission said this week that two TABC agents involved in a raid of the Rainbow Lounge on June 28 …

Fort Worth police have released more information about the raid of the Rainbow Lounge. According to the report, police returned to the bar two days after arrested a departing patron for public intoxication. That weekend, officers returned to the lounge with TABC officers for a bar check. A police radio recording revealed that an officer called for help after they …

Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief has issued an apology for the raid of the Rainbow Lounge. About 250 people packed council chambers and another 150 watched on televisions in the hallway or overflow rooms as officials briefly discussed the June 28 joint raid by the Texas Alcohol Beverage Commission and the Fort Worth Police Department at the Rainbow Lounge, which …

Rainbow Lounge bar raid victim Chad Gibson wants the cops involved in his arrest prosecuted and says the city is covering up the real details of the incident. Although the city has asked the U.S. Attorney General to review the investigation, Gibson said he has lost all confidence in law enforcement. “You used excessive force and that’s why I got …

Continuing to backpedal from their involvement in the raid of the Rainbow Lounge, the Fort Worth police department says they are suspending “bar checks” in conjunction with the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission. The announcement by Chief Halstead came four days after a raid at the Rainbow Lounge by six Fort Worth officers and two Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission agents left …

The Texas Alcoholic Beverages Commission has begun an investigation into the raid of the Rainbow Lounge in Fort Worth, Texas. The agency is conducting an internal investigation of the incident at the Rainbow Lounge on Jennings Street, according to a news release issued Wednesday afternoon. The TABC also conducted inspections at two bars on Rosedale Street. Meanwhile, the man who …

The above is Dan Savage’s translation of the Fort Worth Police Chief Jeff Halstead’s defense of his officers in the beating of Chad Gibson during a raid of the Rainbow Lounge on Saturday. Halstead: “You’re touched and advanced in certain ways by people inside the bar, that’s offensive. I’m happy with the restraint used when they were contacted like that.” …

The Dallas Morning News doesn’t seem to believe the Fort Worth cops. 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 …

Congressional candidate Francine Busby was being hosted at the home of a lesbian couple in San Diego, where they and 30 guests raised funds for her campaign. A neighbor of the couple began shouting homophobic slurs over his backyard fence and then apparently called the police to complain about the noise. What happened next is surreal. Cops responded with eight …

Up to 200 people protested outside of Ft. Worth’s police headquarters yesterday after a Saturday raid on a gay bar brought charges of harassment and brutality by police. One patron was hospitalized with a brain injury. Arrests were made for “public intoxication”…inside of a bar. Witnesses say that police arrived at the nightclub about 1 a.m. Sunday and arrested seven …

A news copter caught one of California’s finest booting a suspect in the face after a high-speed pursuit.

In what at an Arab gay blogger calls a first of its kind for the region, last week Lebanese gays protested recent beatings by local police. The protest was organized by Lebanese LGBT rights group Helem, which reports: Nearly two hundred people gathered yesterday afternoon at the crossroads of Sodeco in Beirut to protest against violations of the rights of …

New videos have surfaced in the case of the SF Bay Area transit cop who shot an unarmed and unresisting BART passenger in the back on New Year’s Day. (This is the incident referred to in yesterday’s quote from Al Sharpton.) The shooting prompted days of rioting in Oakland. The BART officer was arrested yesterday. The Barbara Jordan/Bayard Rustin Black …